Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
by Kitsune-242
Summary: Waking up without any memories in post-apocalyptic America isn't ideal in anybody's mind. With only his name, Leon must battle his way through an Infected-plagued world, trying to re-discover his past and find out just what monster he's becoming.
1. Waking in Hell

Disclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil/Biohazard, or the Left 4 Deads('cause I plan to use both of them eventually). Just to give you a warning, I call Resident Evil "Biohazard," because the Japanese name is, in my opinion, a lot cooler, and makes a lot more sense.

Yay for Leon! :3 Because indeed, he is the focus of this story.

…CANNOT believe that nobody thought of this yet…

Now, **To anybody who reads **_**"Gatekeeper: Divinity" **_**or **_**"Vulpes Alveus" …**_**I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY DON'T KILL ME! I plan on updating BOTH very very soon, m'kay? So no killing the author, or NO STORY FOR YOU.**

* * *

><p><em><strong><span>Predator<span>  
><strong>__A Biohazard/Left 4 Dead(s) crossover_

**Chapter 1  
><strong>**Waking in Hell**

"Ow…" He groaned, sitting up and rubbing his head; his head was fine, but he just had a feeling that there should have been a bump the size of his fist present. He looked slowly around the room, kicking the remaining part of the white sheet that had been drawn up over his face from his body. He was in a hospital room, everything white. Well, everything was _supposed _to be white. In reality, much of it was graying, and a large portion of the room was splattered with a red liquid that had turned nearly black with age. Blood. _'What happened here…?' _The man looked down, nearly screaming at the bite-marks that littered his arms and torso. _'Better question, what the hell happened to me?'_ They were bite marks, that much was certain. But what had inflicted them upon him? One or two looked distinctly like a dog's, but the rest looked almost human. _Almost. _Like a human who had chipped and broken teeth, or a human who had gotten their canines sharpened into fangs. _'Another question.' _He thought, squinting as he tried to remember…well…_anything_. His name, his job, the town he was born in, his parent's names, even why he was in the hospital in the first place; though, he figured that whatever had given him the bite-marks were probably the culprit. Nothing. _'Who in the hell am I?'_

He shifted, and when he moved, something that he hadn't noticed when he had woken up shifted in his hand. He raised his arm slowly, the muscles burning and stretching as if they hadn't even twitched in years, and uncurled his tight fist, staring at the duel dog-tags attached to a thin chain, the edges of the tags rimmed by a bit of black rubber. Both of the tags were covered, in majority, by dried blood that obscured most of the words. All but one line on one of the tags.

_Leon S. Kennedy_

'_Leon?' _The man thought, frowning as the muscles in his arm began to grow to tired to even hold itself up. "Leon S. Kennedy." He repeated, this time out loud, with his voice rasped; how long had it been since he had last spoken? "Is that my name?" He glanced over to a body leaning against a wall, the head missing, and the blood surrounding it black with age. "Well, it's not yours, Mr. Ew." He snickered, the sound like a rolling cough. "What? Can't keep your head in a crisis?" _'That was lame…' _

Ignoring the way his muscles burned and ached, the newly-dubbed Leon - if that _was _his name - swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and spurred himself to his feet. While his pants were still on - dark gray 5.11 pants - his shirt, shoes, jacket, and what looked like a belt and shoulder-holster, along with many other equipment bags.

'_Dog-tags? Equipment pouches? …what kind of work was I in?' _Hopefully somebody in the lobby would know.

Leon limped slowly over to the chair on the opposite side of the private hospital room, grunting with every other step; it felt like his right ankle was broken, or in the very least, sprained. He sat heavily in the chair next to the one that held his clothes, and took a moment to huff and puff, wincing with every breath. His lungs felt like they were on fire, and soon Leon found himself sucking in air greedily. Had he been on oxygen support? No…he hadn't woken up with that annoying mask over his mouth and nose. So why did he feel like he had kept his head underwater the entire time he had been asleep? Even twenty minutes seemed to long(which brought another question that wasn't important: How long could he hold his breath, exactly? It felt like for a while…).

After he regained his breath, he picked up his shirt, groaning at how there were a few holes in the material, most likely from whatever had bitten him. It was a dark navy blue 5.11; what was with him an 5.11? He pulled his shirt on over his head, wincing as the material dragged over his wounds; he was an idiot, he should have found bandages and wrapped up the wounds first. …ah, he'd do that later, after he found somebody to help him. He would have found the service button…but the remote was clutched in Mr. Ew's hand, and Leon, surprisingly, didn't feel like prying the dead man's fingers away from the remote just to call a nurse for assistance. He would do it himself, and then go find somebody.

His socks weren't salvageable. They were covered in blood, which was already dried and chipped off in dry flakes. Sighing, he tossed them away, and just pulled on his black Magnum combat boots over his bare feet. He stood, wobbling slightly, and picked up his belt, staring at the assorted equipment that it held. An attaché case that would go on the small of his back, double pistol magazine pouches, navigation light, a few storage pouches, and radio pouch. After securing the belt around his waist by sliding it through the loops, he picked up a drop-leg holster, and out of a habit that his amnesia had made him forgot, strapped it onto his right thigh. The last object was a brown leather shoulder holster, with many pouches going along the straps. It took him a bit to remember - or guess, really - on how to put it on, but he finally figured it out, and slid on his leather jacket over the holster to hide it from sight. At first, he had wondered where his guns and ammo had gone, but he guessed it made sense; why would he have weapons in his hospital room?

He paused for breath again, leaning against the side wall as black dots danced in his vision. After the spots had shrunk to pinpoints, he pushed himself off the wall, and stumbled towards the door, throwing it open after twisting the lock. He leaned halfway out of his room, huffing for breath as his ribs gave a painful throb, feeling like they had just shifted in his body. "Nurse!" He called down the empty hallway, the lights dim and flickering like some cliché horror movie scene that, no matter how obvious, still managed to make people jump and scream at just the right moments. Nobody responded. No sounds at all, actually. "Nurse!" Leon attempted once more, calling louder this time. Still no response.

Growling in annoyance, Leon limped from his room, instincts taking over to make his footsteps light and quiet, the sound barely even making it to his ears. He reached a hand up to his chest, rubbing his fingers against the dog-tags that he had slipped over his head, only a bit of the dried blood turning into dust between his fingers; it didn't help clear it away enough for Leon to read the other words, but it still gave him something to do, to give him something to focus on so he could ignore the fact that something wasn't right about the way the hospital felt, the way everything was happening. Keeping busy made sure that he didn't question why nobody came at his call, why the hospital was silent, and why there was a headless corpse in the room that he had woken up in. Especially why he had had a sheet covering his entire body, something that people only did when the person being covered had passed away.

'_Something's going on here…' _Leon thought. _'Yeah, like _that _wasn't obvious…hopefully somebody in the lobby can tell me what's going on…'_

_**:::Twenty Minutes Later:::**_

Leon limped down the road, glowering at nothing. His knuckles were turning white, his fingers going numb from the grip he had on the broken broomstick. "Note to self: Next time I wake up in a room with Mr. Ew as my only company, _stay dead_." He spun around on instinct, swinging the broomstick like a bat. A limy length of…well, it looked like a tongue…wrapped around the flimsy weapon. "Not on the first DATE!" He gripped the tongue, and pulled as hard as his muscle dystrophy-effected arms would allow. A tall, lanky man stumbled out of an alley, pulled by his tongue into Leon's way; the amnesic man spun around, lifting his leg in a high roundhouse kick that dropped the long-tongued man to the ground, part of his skull caved in. Leon crouched, inspecting the corpse of his most recent victim. Long tongue, and tumor-like growths covering a decent portion of his arm. He wanted to call it a Licker…but he just felt like calling them that would be wrong. And a huge over-statement of their abilities. For some reason, Lickers + Combat + Broomstick made him laugh hysterically. And want to cry a little bit, but not like he would admit that.

So to keep away from going into any form of hysterics, Leon just called the creatures that attack via tongue "Long-Tongues." Not the most creative thing in the world, but it was good enough.

He obviously hadn't found anybody in the lobby of the Mercy Small-Practice Hospital. Just more blood, flickering lights, and a pile of partially-decomposed bodies. He had searched for a paper copy that he figured hospitals kept for their patients, looking for any with the name "_Leon S. Kennedy." _There was no such file. Of course, that was when a corpse decided it wanted to get up close and personal with the amnesiac man. And that was when Leon learned that his instincts were that of a freaking ninja. He had decked the "zombie" right in the face, his knuckles shoving the cartilage of the corpse's nose into its brain. And then the spear of cartilage continued to sail up, punching a hole right through the corpse's head, through its skin, and up through the ceiling seven feet above them.

Leon knew based on common knowledge that _that _was not normal. But the thing was a corpse, so, denying that it had anything to do with him, wrote it off as something a zombie could do. After looking through the halls for anybody who _wasn't _dead and rotting on the ground, he learned that running into a horde of the undead with fists flying wasn't the smartest thing, even if he did possibly have super-strength. He had escaped a few hordes only by the skin of his teeth. So his solution? Find a weapon.

And it just figured that the only weapon that he could find in the entire damn hospital was a broomstick that was half-missing.

But the weak weapon paired with his still-denied-strength made for a lethal combination. Even if Leon thought that he would get farther by ripping the arms off of a corpse and using those to beat down anything that was moving when it shouldn't.

After confirming that there was nobody besides him in the Small-Practice medical building, Leon made his way out, finding a pleasant lack of the undead outside. That is, until he made it out onto the main streets, heading on some unknown instinct towards a large building in the middle of what could only be Mercy City, or some similar name, this building holding a large neon sign that said "Mercy Hospital." The main hospital out of the two, it seemed.

Normal zombies were easy enough. But then he had started to come into contact with the "Special" zombies. Ones that could shoot out long, disjointed tongues to ensnare their prey, ones that could leap twenty feet as if they were jumping twenty inches, ones that seemed obsessed with the idea of throwing up on you. Leon had learned with a few unlucky attempts/successes at killing the "Bile-Bombs" that he should just run away. They detonated when killed, and the bile that they threw up, and the bile that coated whoever and whatever was standing to close to them when they died, would call a medium-sized horde to attack anything that was covered in the disgusting liquid. So trying to beat the crap out of them with a broomstick was a quickly-learned no-no.

So far Leon had only encountered the Long-Tongues, Bile-Bombs, and the jumping ones that he called Long-Leaps, but he had heard some type of wailing that sounded suspiciously like crying, and a roar of a beast. Leon's first instinct had been to look for the source of the wailing, to find the survivor that was crying and fear and help her to safety. But right as he had been about to act on that, another instinct had started to literally warn him in his mind.

_Run run danger crying Infected run danger death pain pain run pain death Infected crying death death Queen death Queen Infected…_

Obviously, Leon listened to the creepy whispering-instinct in his mind that told him to retreat. Not long after he left, and could no longer hear the fain crying, did he hear an inhuman screech, followed by grinding metal, and what sounded like gunshots. So whatever instinct had spoken had been right; it was a zombie, and apparently one that he should avoid. Whatever had been crying had been labeled the Screech-Claw. Where he had gotten the 'claw' part, he didn't know, but he liked the sound of the name, so it stuck. Then he had heard the gunshots start again, along with the demonic roar of some behemoth. And then from multiple city blocks away, he saw a car fly up into the air, and vanish over a roof onto a new street. Whatever had thrown that car was a definite zombie to avoid. The Strong-Arms. Hopefully they weren't as plentiful as the Bile-Bombs and Long-Leaps.

Leon knew from some lost experience that staying in one spot for to long was sure to get him killed. He climbed to his feet, readjusting his grip on the broomstick as he continued down the road, sticking to the shadows, spinning around to keep his back towards the wall. It was evening already; oh how he wished he had batteries for his flashlight. Somebody had cleared his flashlight and radio of batteries, and in a few of his ammunition pouches were only a few stray bullets for a half-dozen different types of guns; either he had been involved in some weird stuff and used up all the ammo in _all _of his ammo pouches, or somebody had taken all of his ammo, too. Considering how the world had gone to hell in a hand basket…well, now that he thought about it, both answers were plausible. It all considered on how long he had managed to hold out before being taken to the hospital.

A hand slapped down on his shoulder, and from past happenings, he knew that somebody trying to give him the beginning of a tackle-hug from behind wasn't a good thing. He spun around, raising the broomstick with a snarl, ready to bring down the makeshift staff on the head of the assailant. "Oi!" The man snapped, holding up his hands and leaping away when the staff came down where he had been prior, the sheer power behind the swing turning half of the staff to splinters. "I'm not one'a them, so don' try an' take m' head off!" Leon, upon hearing the voice of another human, abandoned the broomstick he had previously been mourning over. He looked up, his green eyes staring at the brunette man that was partially hidden behind an overturned garbage can. "There there…" The other man said soothingly, as if he was talking to a wild animal. "I'm not gonna hurt you." Leon frowned, taking the beginning of a step away when the man took a step forward.

"I'm not a dog. Why're you talking to me like that?" The other man sighed in relief, deflating a little.

"'Cause I thought you were Infected, man. The way you jumped and your feet cleared nine feet, and how strong you were…thought I had found a frickin' intelligent and human-friendly Hunter." Leon cocked his head, waiting to question the man more on thinking he was a zombie later.

"Hunter?"

"Yeah! Those crazy hoodie-wearing guys that jump around. The ones with the scream." Leon nodded in understanding.

"Oh, those guys. I've been calling them Long-Leaps-" Leon froze when the ground began to shake for a brief moment, and the roar of a Strong-Arm broke through the air.

_Strong strong death kill insane Infected King death pain pain dying danger run run strong hide run hide run King…_

"We should hide. _Now_." Leon said, looking over his shoulder to the street that was illuminated by flickering street lights and dying fires. There was no sign of anything that looked strong enough to flip a car ninety feet into the air, but it _did _look like there was a Long-Tongue that was glaring at him from the other side of the street.

"Yeah, I heard the Tank, too." The man nodded. "C'mon, I have a hideout on the roof. We can talk there."

_**:::Rooftop:::**_

"The name's Paul. Last names don't really matter anymore…what's your name?"

"Leon S. Kennedy." Paul gave a small smile at the full use of the man's name. "I can't remember anything; woke up without remembering a thing. The only thing I _do _know is my name, and even that is a little shaky at the moment." Paul nodded in understanding; Leon didn't even know if Leon was his name, but if there was even a sliver of a chance, then Leon was going to hold onto it with everything he had.

"Amnesia, huh?" Paul asked, leaning back in the lawn chair that he was already reclined in, a small grin forming on his face. Leon knew what he wanted.

"I tell you my story, you answer my questions, okay?" The blonde man asked, leaning forward on his own chair.

"Agreed. Entertainment is hard to come by nowadays. We humans will take it wherever we can get it." Leon nodded, only half paying attention while he gathered his thoughts, staring off into the distance.

"I woke up in a private room in Mercy Small-Practice Hospital, alone. I couldn't remember anything; my name, why I was there, how I got the bite-marks on my arms, and sure as hell not why the room was covered in blood, or why there was a decapitated guy in the corner. The only reason that I'm carrying around the name Leon right now is because I had these." He held up his dog-tags for a moment, before slipping them back around his neck, letting them fall back into the shadows made from the folds of his jacket and shirt underneath. "The entire hospital was deserted. At least, I thought it was. I was attacked by a corpse that picked itself right up off the ground, and ended up killing it with a punch to the face." Paul released a low whistle, but otherwise kept quiet. "I figured I'd be able to go through the hospital and find somebody, using only my fists as weapons." Leon gave a pitiful chuckle. "Fighting through a horde of the undead with only your fists isn't a good idea, especially for the Special types. And _of course _the only weapon I could find was a broken broomstick, which is now useless."

"Yeeaaah…sorry 'bout that."

"It was my fault; I attacked without assessing the situation…anyway, the rest of my story is pretty much the same; I walked through the streets looking for anybody who isn't crazy, and took out any zombies that decided to try and take a bite out of me."

"…damn…I mean, it's hard for all of us who have had to survive since the beginning, but we were warned. We had a chance to prepare; well, for those of us who paid any attention to the news or warnings of neighbors. You…you kinda just woke up in Hell, didn't you?" Leon nodded.

"Seems like it. Now…I told me my story…what's yours?" Paul gave a small, sad smile.

"I lived in Ohio before this - we're in Illinois, by the way - crap broke out. Lived with my wife and two daughters. At first, it was just reports of a strange sickness in California. A new flu, they were calling it. The Green Flu. Made anybody who was infected act crazy and attack anything that moved that _wasn't _infected. But let me tell you this now; they're not dead. The _act _like zombies, but they're still alive. Where was I? …right! The country figured that like any other sickness, it would die off. But it didn't. It kept spreading, until most of the country was infected. I told my wife that we had to get to the evacuation points in New York; from New York, we'd be flown to Europe, or islands off the coast of Europe or Canada. She didn't think that we had to leave, even when her parents stopped reporting to us what was going on; they lived in Nevada, which was one of the first states effected. It wasn't until the Infected were coming down our streets that my wife finally admitted that the sickness wasn't like a normal fever. By then, of course, it was to late. I had been preparing my daughters - a 15 year old and a 17 year old - for anything; taught them how to work guns, taught them a bit of melee and hand-to-hand combat, that sort of stuff. Taught them how to survive. So I sent them with my wife to protect her; told them to get to New York, that they were still doing evacuations. I told them I would catch up. While they left, I held off the Infected. That was when I had to run." Paul paused, before chuckling.

"The street my family had gone down became blocked. Apparently, the Infected were drawn by loud noises such as cars. I had to go the opposite direction, towards the west instead of the east. I've been heading west on foot for the past two and a half weeks since the official Outbreak. The evac in New York City was overrun around twelve days ago, according to reports from other Survivors I've come across. I can only hope that my wife and children got away before then, or at the very least, were ferried away to a new evac center. I'm looking for a new evac, one that'll have reports on other evacuations. I'll be able to see if my family got away, or…" Paul shook his head, not continuing. "I was coming through Mercy City when I saw you beating the hell out of a Hunter with your bare fists. At first I thought you were just some body-building Survivor who was lucky enough to sneak up on the hoodie-wearing jackasses. Then I saw you jump like one of 'em." Paul grinned while Leon raised an eyebrow; he had known he was jumping pretty high, but with his amnesic mind, he had thought that it had been a normal height, if not a short height because of how his muscles still burned. "Thought I had found a turn-coat Infected. Guess not, eh? Well, that's my story. Now, you want to know about the Outbreak, right?"

"If it's not to much trouble. I'm not to fond on not knowing what the hell is going on, especially when whatever's going on is trying to rip my head off." Paul burst out laughing, but quieted down when a Hunter's screech answered back from half the city away.

"It's been around nineteen days since the Outbreak in California, and since the world went to hell. Can't tell you how long it's been exactly, since the days kind of just blend together. Ask anybody, and their knowledge of time will be different, unless they carry around a calendar. Like I said, it started in California, then spread through the rest of the country like wildfire. At first they were slow, and so sickly that they didn't pose much of a threat. But then they started changing, as if evolution on steroids had taken over their systems. They got less sickly, and started to move a bit faster than any normal person could. Grew claws, and got stronger so that they could bust through thick doors. Their nerves _have _to be numbed, because they don't seem to register pain. When they started to become more athletic, _that _was when everybody started to notice that America was in trouble. The types that had no real special abilities are called the Common Infected, since they're so…well, common!" Leon nodded, partially listening to the end of Paul's explanation on the Common Infected, and partially focused on that instinct that had told him to run from the Infected that had been crying.

_Lesser weak weak Lesser lowly bottom Lesser-_

'_This is getting annoying.' _Leon growled, squashing the whispering voice in his head with a mental hammer.

"Within five days of the first change, they started changing _again_. First, was the Infected that coughed and exploded into smoke when they were shot. They attacked with their tongues, and were dubbed Smokers. Next were the fat ones that threw up on their prey, calling a horde of Common to take down their prey for them, since they're not overly powerful. Because of how they exploded into blood, guts, and bile, they were labeled Boomers. After the Boomers, were the Infected we all know and love, the Hunters. For a while, these three were the only ones that fit into the classification of "Special Infected." That's when the most dangerous Special Infected showed up; the Tank and the Witch. The Tank is…well, a tank. They're moving, breathing, car-flipping mountains of muscle. Their torsos and arms are huge, while their heads and lower bodies are small. Their upper bodies are so big, you know, that they run around like a gorilla! Uh…you _do _remember what a gorilla looks like, right?" Leon chuckled, nodding.

"Yes, I remember gorillas."

"Good! Take my advice; if you ever have the choice between a drunken Tank, and a horde of two-thousand Common, take the horde. You'll have a much better chance at survival."

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse, actually. I'm dampening it so you don't get to freaked out." Paul said with a grin. "Now, the Witches…it's hard to decide if a Tank is the most dangerous, or a Witch. Tanks move around, while Witches just sit and weep. If you see a Witch, try and sneak around it. If you startle it - get to close, shine a light on it, touch it, shoot it, _anything_ - it'll chase you and attack you until you're dead. If you're the one to startle it, it'll ignore anything else and come after you and you only. If it's attacking somebody else, stay out of its way and attack from behind, because she'll run right into you, and she has claws that are a foot long and wicked-sharp." He shook his head. "God forbid you light one of them on fire."

"Why? What happens if I light a Witch on fire?" Leon asked. _'Better yet, _how _would I light one on fire?'_

"Whatever she's attacking, she'll turn away from and chase whatever caught her on fire. Even if it was a Molotov cocktail, or a car that just random exploded because of a stray bullet, she'll come after who ever threw the cocktail, or shot the car. How she knows who did it, I hope I never find out, but she knows. Those are the five are the Special Infected, but there's been reports that there are a few more types in the south."

_Greater strong strong Greater st-_

'_Oh no, we are NOT starting this again.' _Leon thought, slamming a mental gate in front of the voice, almost sighing out loud when the voice vanished. Note to self: keep the gate down on _that _useless instinct.

"Okay, so that's the classifications of the Infected. But how'd this infection even _start_? And how come the military hasn't helped yet?" Leon questioned.

"How'd it start? That's the question, isn't it? Who knows how it started. All anybody knows is that if you're not Immune, then you're as good as Infected. Oh, the Immune are also called Survivors; they're humans that will never become Infected. With that up, comes a down, and that's that you'll always be fighting the Infected until you get evacuated, or just die. I myself am Immune, found out when I got bit in the shoulder by a Hunter and didn't turn. You must be Immune, too, if you really did get bit repeatedly." Absentmindedly, Leon rolled up the right sleeve of his jacket, displaying the parts of his arms that he hadn't yet bandaged, where three bite-marks were visible. Paul whistled. "Damn, must've hurt."

"Can't remember, but I bet it did." Being bitten wasn't exactly a pleasant experience, if the two bites he had received since leaving the hospital were anything to go by.

"As for the military…you've got the dog-tags, which means you must've been in the army or something. Why don't you tell me?" At Leon's glare, Paul burst out laughing. He shut himself up quickly, though, when remembering how the Hunter had responded to his last outburst. "I'm kidding, man. Don't gotta glare like that. I've heard rumors that the military pulled out as soon as they spotted their first Smoker. Lot of good they did, right? Their excuse was supposedly that they were needed to guard the encampments were Immunes and Susceptibles - humans that got out in time, but can still be infected - are waiting for evacuation. I don't know if I believe that, but what am I gonna do?" Paul shrugged in response to his own question.

"So then there's no cure?"

"Cure? Yeah, right. Why would you need it, you're Immune!"

"Not for me." Leon shook his head, before gesturing towards the edge of the roof, where he could hear the quiet groans of the Common. "Them. If they're just sick, then shouldn't we be looking for a cure instead of killing them?" It was basically the equivalent to shooting somebody because they had the common cold in Leon's eyes. And somewhere in the back of Leon's mind, he knew that there had been times when there _were _zombies that could only be cured by being shot in the head; the difference between now and whenever that had happened was welcome. _'Wait a minute…' _With that thought, Leon doubled over in pain, his hands flying to the sides of his head, his teeth mashing together, and his eyes squeezing shut. Over the shrill screech that was echoing through his mind, he could faintly hear Paul speaking in panicked tones, and feel his hands on his shoulders. He didn't know if his eyes were open or closed, but it didn't really matter; the only thing he could see were flashes of brief images.

A red and white logo.

The sign for some place called Raccoon City.

The sign for the Raccoon City Police Department.

Multiple creatures that would put the Infected of today's Outbreak to shame.

Zombies. _Real _zombies.

The brief show of images ended, leaving Leon gasping for breath, the pain in his head dying down to a numbing throb. "Leon! Leon, c'mon, answer me!"

"Give me a minute." Leon groaned, his eyes snapping shut after trying to open them, only to find that his dark surroundings were just _to damn bright_. "I remembered something…I think…" He paused to give off another pained groan, sitting straight as Paul backed towards his original spot.

"Uh…I don't have any knowledge on amnesia patients, but I'm pretty sure that getting memories back aren't supposed to make you double over in agony." Paul said, and was promptly ignored. "Right. What'd you remember."

"Not…not sure…a place. My former home, I think. Raccoon City." Paul choked on his own saliva.

"Raccoon City? _The _Raccoon City?"

"Uh…sure?"

"Right, of course. I meet one of the survivors of Raccoon City, and he has _amnesia."_

"Whoa whoa whoa." Leon's head snapped up. "One of the survivors? What in the hell are you talking about?"

"There was some viral outbreak in Raccoon City around six years ago. Those outside of Raccoon City were never really told what happened, other than it was the fault of some big pharmaceutical corporation named, uh…something weird…Umbrella? Yeah, I think Umbrella is about right. Raccoon City was destroyed by the military, and only a few survived. One of those survivors was you." Paul grinned. "That explains why you're able to beat down the Infected; people said that the infection in Raccoon City made people go crazy."

"I…I think…I think I might have been a cop there…" He paused to chuckle. "Why does saying that feel so damn ridiculous?"

"Well, either way, you're not a cop now. Did you remember anything else?"

"No…just Raccoon City Police Department. And some pretty freaky creatures that put the Smokers to shame." Paul shivered.

"I've only seen a Smoker up close once, and they're pretty creepy. Especially in low light…so…you know just about as much as any other Survivor now. So you have to make a choice."

"Being…?"

"What you're going to do now, how you're going to go about it, stuff like that. You can't just sit on a roof and wait for somebody to come get you; it won't work. Nobody's coming. Right now, in America today, you have to get to your destination on your own power." He pat the handgun tucked into his waistband. "Thought a bit of firepower doesn't hurt."

"So…basically, my choices are to keep running in circles in a burning America, or get to a Survivor camp and try and get evacuated." Paul nodded. "What're you planning to do, again?"

"Get to a camp and get evacuated. Try and find my family." Leon hummed in thought, biting his bottom lip.

"…if I go to an evacuation camp…there might be somebody who knows me. At the very least, the military could probably tell me what my dog-tags mean. I could follow that lead and find out just who I am. I don't know what I'd do if I just kept running through America; can't clean out the country of Infected all on my own, after all." He paused. "I'll go to an evacuation camp. It's my best bet." Paul clapped his hands together with a massive grin.

"Fantastic! You can travel with me!" Leon smirked.

"Why do I get the feeling you were planning on convincing me to go with you?"

"What can I say?" Paul snorted. "You survived Raccoon City, you sure as hell can survive the Green Flu Outbreak. Being a former cop can't dampen your chances, and don't use the excuse of amnesia; your muscles don't forget what your mind does. My own chances of survival are doubled with you watching my back, and your chances aren't exactly hurt either. Plus, I'm beginning to think you're some type of government agent or something, by the way you dress, fight, and carry yourself. Being with a government agent will make my chances go through the roof." Leon nodded in slow agreement. "Plus, I'm beginning to think you're some type of government agent or something, by the way you dress, fight, and carry yourself. Being with a government agent will make my chances go through the roof."

"Yeah, I guess that's fine." He looked around the roof. "Anything I can use as a weapon?" Paul got up and practically skipped over to a piece of plywood placed over a barrels that formed a type of makeshift table.

"This is kinda my inventory at the moment." He said, lifting up a red pack with a cross on the back, with an identical pack still on the table. "Med kits." He pointed to a cylindrical container filled halfway with different types of bullets. "Ammunition." He picked up one of four batteries. "Batteries." Next was a brown bottle with a rag sticking out of the top. "A Molotov and a modified pipe-bomb." Last was his fingers gesturing towards a small pile of canned food and bottles of Pepsi and water. "And what is today considered food of a king!" He turned so his back was facing Leon, and when he turned back around, he held in his hand a Mark XIX Desert Eagle. "And this." He walked to Leon, flipping the safety before handing it to the man. "Ammo for that baby is pretty easy to come by, and if used correctly, it packs quite a punch." He gestured to his own pistol. "Found two around a ten days ago, and I've had them ever since."

"Thanks." Leon said, his hands automatically flying through some type of routine, flipping the safety off and then back to on, checking the magazine and then cleared the chamber of its current bullet, catching the bullet with one hand and stashing it away in one of his ammunition pouches, all the while spinning the gun with one finger to swipe the safety off, aiming over his shoulder, and, without looking, pulled the trigger, grinning in satisfaction at the PFFFOP and quiet sigh as the Smoker exploded. He brought the gun back into his line of sight, his thumb pushing the safety as he moved. And all of this had happened in a grand total of five seconds. Paul stared, his jaw dropped.

"Yup. Definitely a government agent."

_**:::Some Facility:::**_

"How's the experiment going?" Asked the man behind the desk, his fingers interlocked before his mouth while glared at the few people lined up before him. The five glanced at one another, before looking at their boss.

"…you _were _informed that the test subject was killed, correct?" One of the two women asked. The man nodded slowly.

"Yes yes, of course I was. I'm asking if the Alpha Team has found its body yet. The sooner it's being studied in the lab, the better." One of three men looked down at a clipboard he was carrying, adjusting his glasses to read the small words.

"Its location has been narrowed down to a small city in the Midwest. Apparently, once it died, its comrades left him to escape on their own."

"Why would they take it with them? Its body would slow them down." Another of the three men scoffed, receiving a glare from the rest of the occupants of the room. "Sorry, Emerson, I'll keep my mouth shut." The clipboard-clutching man nodded, looking back to his notes.

"The Alpha Team should be moving in to retrieve its body for Ellen and her team to study." Emerson said, gesturing to the woman who had spoken earlier. Without any warning, the doors to the office slammed open, a man in full body armor stumbling in while gasping for breath.

"We were to late!" He declared after a few seconds of him catching his breath passed. "By…by the time we reached the hospital that its body had been left in, it had already _gotten up and walked out_." The boss smirked.

"You're positive it got up and left on its own?" The man nodded his head.

"We reviewed the security footage that was still running. It just got up and left! Woke from the dead as if it was waking from an afternoon nap!"

"Then phase one of the Prototype-Alpha experiment was a success." The boss said with a nod. "Do you have the security tapes?"

"Yessir!"

"Good. Bring them to me." The man nodded, and dashed out of the room, presumably to get the footage. "Anderson!" The boss barking, the last man on the end of the line snapping to attention. "Organize Beta Team. Send them out on the mission that's detailed in this file." The boss held out a manila folder, which Anderson took with a salute. "Organize Alpha Team. Send them out to find the subject and track him; after Beta Team is done with their mission, Alpha Team is to move in and take out the test subject and bring it back, _alive_, for further experimentation. Got it?"

"Yessir!"

"Dismissed." The five turned on their heels, marching out of the room to leave the man alone. He turned about in his chair, looking out over the skyline of San Diego. The skyline that was burning, black smoke rising to clog the air. His lips curled up into a feral grin, his eyes narrowing.

Wherever that former human was, his men would find it.

It mattered not if his men had to navigate through post-apocalyptic America. Once William Roth claimed something and turned it into his own, it would never escape him.

Yes, the being once known as Leon S. Kennedy would soon return home.

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><p>And that's the first chapter. I didn't really like the ending, but hell, I never really like anything I write. So, tell me what you think! For my new updating schedule, I focus on one fanfic per month.<p>

April is going to focus on _"Predator." _

**Go to my profile to vote on which fanfic will occupy next month, _"Vulpes Alveus" _or _"Gatekeeper: Divinity." _**

Tell me what you think!

_~ Kitsune-242_


	2. Infected

Disclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead. Just a warning, I'm doing the campaign order differently. Instead of No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air, and Blood Harvest, it's going to be No Mercy, Dead Air, Death Toll, and Blood Harvest. Why? Reasons only I know! 8D

Oh, and please review. I'd like to know what people think of my story. Even just a "nice" would be…shit, it'd be nice. *grumbles*

**EDIT: **I may end up changing my idea for the campaigns, by the way. Not like anybody even reads this fanfic besides my RE/Leon-obsessed friend, so why does it even matter? 8D

**EDIT 2: **Oh, and I changed the name of the fanfic! Soooo…

* * *

><p><em><strong>Wolf in Sheep's Clothing<br>**__A Biohazard/Left 4 Dead Crossover_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2<br>****Infected**

"How did we already go through a week's supply of food?" Leon asked, picking up an empty can of ravioli and staring at the bottom that had been licked clean. "It's only been three days." Paul shrugged from his spot on the west side of the roof, his fingers fumbling with the bullets for his Desert Eagle as he filled a few magazines.

"It was a week's supply for one person, and we haven't exactly been rationing it." Paul absentmindedly remarked. "There's a supermarket down the road. We can just run down there and get some food and water. _And _a bigger tent." The dark-haired man said, looking with disdain at the medium-sized tent that was a bit to small for two grown men and enough bullets to take out the American army. Leon rolled his eyes, going back to his usual spot of filling his own magazines with bullets, slipping each magazine into the case on his right leg.

"I'm ready if you are." Leon said, sliding a new magazine into his pistol. "Fire escape or stairs?"

"Stairs. We need to take out any Infected on the stairs so that we can drag the tent up here. Unless you want to use your Superman skills to pull the thing up here." Leon stared at the man before turning on his heels to walk to the blocked fire escape that led into a partially-destroyed alleyway.

"Fire escape is faster." He ignored Paul's sarcastic murmur of "lazy." The two swung themselves down the fire escape, Leon dropping straight down from the last landing instead of creeping down the ladder as far as it went. He kept his gun trained down the alleyway while Paul finished climbing down. Once the other man was at his side, Leon placed a finger to his lips. "Quiet, there's a Witch around here somewhere." Paul cocked his head, listening for any sound in the air. The only thing he could hear was the collective groaning of a few Infected that littered the street, and _maybe _the growls of a Hunter that could smell them on the wind.

"I can't hear it." Absentmindedly, Leon let his muscle-memory take over, his right hand flashing through some hand-signals while he looked up at the roof that held their hideout; in the three days since he had met Paul, he hadn't come down from the roof once, and before he hadn't exactly been paying attention to where the building was at. "Oi, Leon. I can't speak Agent." Leon frowned, staring at his right hand. If he _really _thought about it, he didn't know what the signs he had been flashing meant. He knew he what wanted to say, and that the signs were saying what he needed to communicate, but he didn't know what each individual sign meant.

"Right. Witch is across the street, down to the left, and down in another alley."

"Of course you hear it with your super-hearing." Leon shook his head, and crept down the alleyway, gun lifted up by his right shoulder and at the ready.

"If we keep away from that alley, we shouldn't run into her. I'll tell you if we're getting to close; though, by the time we're too close, you'll hear her to, won't you?"

"Yeah, I'm not _that _deaf." Leon shot him a short glare to pay him for his attitude, but Paul just ignored him. The man trotted down the alley, spinning around and aiming his pistol at every corner like some cheap spy movie. Leon shook his head, walking right past Paul as he threw himself against a wall and slid along it, eyes narrowed as he quietly hummed the Mission Impossible theme.

"Honestly, how did you get all the way from Ohio?" He muttered, his grip on his own gun tightening as he reached the end of the alley. He paused, instinctively sliding towards the wall to his right to be partially blocked by a trashcan. Five Infected were stumbling around a police car that still had its lights flashing; it was a visual that made Leon feel like he should be remembering something. He just wrote it off as a suppressed memory, one that probably wasn't to important. It didn't take even four seconds to plant a bullet directly through the head for each Infected, the five falling to the ground before Paul even managed to reach the end of the short alley. "Okay…people are dead." Leon called, a little louder than necessary to emphasize his mocking. Paul just punched him lightly on the arm(lightly for Leon, though Paul had put more force behind the punch than he would care to admit), and continued past him, his expression being overtaken by a serious one. Unlike Leon's own stance - holding his gun up by his right shoulder - he kept his gun down by his right hip, ready for any quick draw that would be needed. The amnesiac had to admit, he rarely ever saw Paul in a serious mood, and seeing him so serious was a little unsettling. "Where's this store, exactly?"

Paul gestured with a jerk of his head towards a toppled-over barricade fence that reached twelve feet in the air, barbed wire circling the top. "Over that. Down the street a little, then to the left, and down the street two doors. It's a pretty large store, hard to miss. Good news is that its merchandise is hardly picked over by other scavenging Survivors." Leon gave a short nod in understanding; without many Survivors to pick through the superstore, there would be more food. Maybe even some better guns and ammunition.

"That's the same direction as the Witch."

"Then we'll just have to make sure we don't trip over her while running from a Tank."

"Wait to think optimistically, Paul."

"Hey, gotta reach for the stars."

_**:::Superstore:::**_

"DAMN that's a lot of food." Leon breathed, ignoring Paul who was spinning around in a shopping cart, sitting in the main body of the metal contraption while pushing himself along with a broomstick.

"I know, right?" Paul cackled, stopping just long enough to grab a box of Cheerios, rip it open, and dump half the contents all over himself. "It's freaking heaven!" He stared at Leon with a Cheerio-filled grin. "Bet you can't remember ever seeing so much food."

"Wiseass." Leon snorted as he grabbed his own box of choice cereal, a family-size Lucky Charms. He would never admit it, but he had a pretty large sweet tooth. He chuckled loudly, gaining the attention of his new companion.

"Your response wasn't that funny, you know."

"No, it's just that I remembered something."

"What?" Leon gave a massive grin, one that didn't feel right on his face, but felt good to show off.

"I'm addicted to sugar." He declared, shoving another box of Lucky Charms into the duffle bag that already cradled another among a bed of Hershey products, the very bottom of it all being held sturdy by a 22-pound bar of Hershey's chocolate.

"Great. Remind me to find some Mountain Dew, then." Paul jumped out of the cart, staring at it with longing eyes. "We should just fill this thing to the brim with food. You think you can lift it up the fire escape?"

"Empty? Maybe. Filled with whatever you deem useful? Definitely not. Use the cart anyway. I'll just have to take a few trips down to the cart when we get back to the hideout." Paul clapped with glee, looking like a little kid in a candy store. "And this is in no way, shape, or form me caving to your constant pestering that you would have used to get me to say yes eventually; this is just to make sure that we don't have to keep coming back every few days."

"If we stay that long. Still need to find the military and an evac center!" Paul called from the isle over. His words were followed by a yelp, and a quick succession of three gunshots.

"You okay?" Leon called over the top of the eight-foot-tall shelf.

"Freaking zombie tried to get the jump on me!" Leon snorted, shaking his head while opting to not point out that Paul had insisted that the Infected weren't actual zombies. No use in trying to piss off a man who was in such a good mood. On the other hand, what else would Leon do on their shopping spree where no money was needed?

Within half an hour, the two had combed through the entire store. They ended up needing two carts; one nonperishable food items along with drinks, and the other for miscellaneous items that might be needed. The second cart was already half filled, cluttered with a few changes of clothes for the two of them - though Leon got the same outfit that he was currently wearing, only picking out three extra changes - a larger tent, a few extra blankets, and enough batteries and flashlight bulbs to last them a year. The rest of the objects in the second cart were basic toiletries - hand soap, shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant - that the two were PRAYING they'd have enough room for when they finally had to move on. Their last stop? The gun department.

The two were immediately in heaven, abandoning their food to either stare in silent appreciation while mentally naming guns that he couldn't remember having ever learned about, or running, jumping, and spinning behind the counter, bending down to kiss a few handguns with glee. The two ended up picking out a few types of guns; five more pistols, all Desert Eagles to match their own, two pump shotguns, one sniper rifle(because Leon insisted, having a feeling he knew how to use a sniper VERY well), two auto shotguns, and six M-16 assault rifles. They also threw in a couple dozen magazines for each gun, a few boxes of bullets for each - which totaled in the three-thousand bullets PER GUN - and a better scope for the sniper.

They were truly in heaven now.

_**:::Back at the Hideout:::**_

Leon was on his last trip down to get the last of the ammunition - Paul was on the roof, organizing their belongings in a safe spot, and setting up their new tent - when a sound caught his attention. Little did he know it was a sound that was so high-pitched, only dogs - and a few Special Infected - could hear it. All he knew about the sound, though, was that it was loud, and coming from across the street and inside a short building that had most of its windows smashed. Leon looked towards the roof that he had been staying on for the past few days and, after deciding that Paul would be alright on his own for a few minutes, jogged across the road. He climbed through a smashed window - being mindful of the jagged shards still stuck in place and on the floor, of course - before making his way towards what had been making the loud noise.

It was an alarm clock set on a desk, the mechanics inside the machine whirring so fast that they gave out the high-pitched hum that had caught Leon's attention. The amnesiac picked up the clock, ripping the back clean off and pulling at the wires inside. The mechanics shut off with a satisfying hiss, leaving the room to bask in the silence. Leon was about to leave the way he had come, his mission completed, when a small black rectangle that the alarm clock had been sitting on caught his attention. If it didn't have the words 'THE INFECTED' printed in bright red Sharpie on the front, Leon's eyes would have rolled right over it, and he would have left the object to gather dust.

He picked it up, even with the dark feel that clung to its leather cover. He brushed his thumb against the rough surface of what looked to be a journal, a bit of dried blood flaking off. _'Who wrote this?' _Leon thought, his eyes dragging over a few corpses that littered the room. _'One of them, probably.' _Some part of his mind was yelling at him to put the book down, to get back to Paul before something happened. Like a Smoker dragging him away, or a Hunter pouncing him, perhaps. Or him just being swarmed by a horde of Commons. But his fingers weren't uncurl from the spin of the book, and he found himself flipping through the book, pages whizzing by in front of his eyes, a light breeze coming up to blow his bangs from his face. He froze, nearly dropping the book when three words caught his eye. Well, two words and a letter, really.

_Leon S. Kennedy._

The blonde man flipped back, his eyes darting around to find the page that had mentioned him; or, at the very least, mentioned who he thought he was. He finally found the page, right after the page that described the Hunter in detail, and right before the page that went into explaining the Witch. Each page had a title, and Leon's page was no exception.

_The Predator_

'_Predator?' _Leon thought with a frown, staring at the hastily-scribbled title. He quickly glanced over the singular page - as opposed to the two or three pages that the other Infected types had claimed - that was for the Predator, looking for the image of whatever the Predator was; on the other Infected's pages, they had had many pictures. The Hunter had had the most, coming to a total of twelve, with the Smoker coming in at a close second with nine. But the Predator, the page that held his own name, had no pictures at all. Unless you could consider a blood splatter as an image. Considering it had no educational value and didn't relate to anything in the passage on the Predator, Leon didn't view it as anything but dried blood.

With nothing else to occupy his time and claim his attention, Leon hurriedly read over the words. When he reached the end of the passage, he let his arms go limp, the book dropping out of sight while he stared blankly at the far wall. After a few seconds of silence, he brought the book up again, re-reading the passage. He read it again, then again, and then again for the fifth time. No matter how many times he read the words, they didn't change, still telling him the same thing that it had initially told him. Still telling him one of the only things that he hadn't wanted to hear since waking up, even though it had been his suspicion all along.

And after re-reading the article twelve times, Leon threw the book on the ground, grinding it beneath his heel. "Bullshit!"

_**:::Back on the Rooftop:::**_

"What's that you got there?" Paul asked, sipping soda through a straw from a can, looking like he was on cloud nine. Leon glanced down to the black journal that he had tucked into the waistband of his pants.

"Uh…a book?" He offered. Paul frowned at him, alternating between glaring half-heartedly at the younger man, and staring cross-eyed down the length of the straw.

"Bite me, Agent-man." Leon scowled; he definitely didn't want his dog-tags to be made fun of, considering it was the only solid thing he really had that concerned him(maybe). Well…that and a gun, but that hadn't been with him when he had woken up, so it didn't count.

"First of all, even if I _am _really Leon," Which he was hoping to the Lord that he wasn't at this point "I don't think I would be a Secret Agent." At Paul's narrowed eyes of confusion, he continued. "Note the SECRET in Secret Agent. As in they DON'T want to be discovered. It wouldn't really be smart if they ran around with their names stamped into metal and hanging around their necks." Even if that metal was mostly still covered in blood, but that, like the gun, didn't count. And if what the book had said was true, then Leon wasn't sure if he WANTED to know what the rest of the tag said. "Second, I still might not be Leon!"

"And I still might not be Paul, and that Boomer down by that car might not be a Boomer, and that pole might not be a pole…what were we talking about?"

Having turned Paul's attention away from the black journal, Leon rolled his eyes with a sigh, sitting against a wall by the makeshift table while Paul continued to rattle on and on about how the world and its contents were all not really real. He tuned Paul out, staring down at the black journal that had turned his world upside-down. But that brought up a question. His world had already been turned upside-down by his amnesia, so then would it be right-side-up now? But what about the Infected factor? That would turn his life upside-down again. So that would surely make it upside-down again, right? Bah, whatever. Not like that was to important.

If only he hadn't gone searching for what had stolen his attention. If he had left it alone, then he wouldn't have found the book. He wouldn't have found the book, nor read the words. _'Why does my life seem so freaking complicated?' _Leon thought, mentally sighing. He flipped through the book, finding the page marked _"The Predator" _again.

_-I have catalogued the five main types of Infected of the North, along with the rumors of a sixth. But I've discovered a seventh, or at the very least, an anomaly in the mutations. I've labeled it the Predator, because it's almost like a supreme version of a Hunter mixed with a Tank. Really, it's like all of the Infected combined. If it was to wear a hoodie, it may be mistook for a Hunter, so long as nobody saw its ability to lift cars._

_-Its senses, agility, leg strength, and instincts are that of a Hunter. Its strength seems like a Tank's, though noticeably weaker because of its size and appearance of a normal human, and shares a certain amount of resilience. Sight ability of a Smoker. Speed of a Witch. Hearing of a Boomer, along with what seems to be the ability to pick up scents by "tasting" the air. It also seems to have the lung capacity and vocal cord strength of the reports centered around the sixth Infected, the Screamer._

_-I recognized the Predator off of the internet. When it was human, it had the name of Leon Scott Kennedy. Though now, it hardly has seems fit to call this beast capable of being such a killing machine by the name of a human. As if it had the smarts, as an Infected, to even remember its name._

_-The last I saw of the Predator, it was wounded, and going into Mercy Small-Practice Hospital. I'll try and find out more information and write back later. - _

After this entry were a few more, probably from gathered information. If this journal was to be trusted…well, Leon didn't want to think about it.

For a few moments, Leon just stared off into space, towards the barricaded door that led down into the apartment building that he and Paul were taking shelter on. After thinking it over, Leon tilted his head slightly, inhaling the wind, mentally inviting any and all scents to hit him. Big mistake.

Big big _big _mistake.

Leon's hands slapped to his nose, his body throwing itself sideways as the repulsive scents of blood, death, decay, and fear all registered in his brain at once. _'Oh _GOD!' Leon thought, gagging openly from behind his cover of the makeshift table. Thankfully, Paul was still rambling loud enough to not hear Leon nearly empty his stomach of the candy bars that he and Paul had filled up on while still at the superstore. Well, Leon had expected to smell things, but not every disgusting smell at the same time. Maybe he should have thought his plan out more.

He sat up slowly, his hands still cupped in front of his mouth and nose. He had to try again. Sure the air smelled of death; most of the world was dead(or at the very least, America)! So just smelling decaying _everything _wasn't a good enough judge to see if what the journal said was true. But he _really _didn't want to try and get scents off the air again…

Even so, Leon attempted it again, once more nearly doubling over at the severity of the smells. But this time, he didn't close the smells off, he let the continue to filter through his nostrils, continued to translate the scents in his brain, to store them away and get used to the smells. It didn't take long - though to Leon, it felt like ages - to get used to the smells, and also get used to the ability of "turning off" his ability to pick up scents. Soon he was able to tune out the smells or tune back in, picking through the scents to find what he wanted; the Boomer that exploded after running face-first into a broken window, the salty tears of the Witch down the road, the swollen and split flesh of a Tank, the smoke around a pair of Smokers. The month-old candy bar wrapper in a trashcan, the bottle of spilt shampoo on the other side of the city. His most impressive feat in his opinion, though, was him picking up the scent of a 200-year-old book in the museum on the outskirts on the other side of Mercy City.

'…_well, shit.' _Leon thought blankly, staring down at his hand as he flexed it, expecting claws to suddenly rip out of his fingertips. Nothing like that occurred, of course, but the visual that the idea gave Leon didn't help at all. _'There's only one more test that I can do…' _Leon sighed out loud, looking up to stare at Paul. All he had to do was wait for Paul to fall asleep, then he'd be good.

Turns out it doesn't take long for Paul to sleep at all. An hour later, and the older man was out like a light, snoring in the warmth of the new tent. Leon had, of course, come into the tent about ten minutes after him, bidding the man a goodnight. He pretended to fall asleep at the point - something that came to easily, as if he was schooled in feigning sleep - and waited for Paul's snores to grow loud enough in the partial quiet of the apartment roof. Once he was satisfied, and had checked three times to make sure Paul was asleep(though in hindsight, shining a bright flashlight at the man's eyes through his eyelids might not have been a good idea), Leon rolled out of the tent.

He walked to a extendable metal ladder that they had set up to bridge the gap between their building and the taller building next door, clambering up the gentle slope quickly. He over his shoulder for a brief second, his eyes being drawn to the earth-tone-colored tent that held his only friend since he had first woken up. Paul would be alright for a few minutes, right? Of course he would. And if the journal was right, then his hearing would be able to pick up anything going wrong. Hopefully. Hopefully Leon wasn't putting his faith into something that he was wrong to believe in.

Leon trotted over to the opposite side of the roof, jumping the four-foot gap between his current building and the next with ease, bending his knees slightly to try and absorb a bit of the shock. Turns out, that wasn't needed; he hardly felt the landing at all, even though he was sure his feet had cleared the five foot high mark. He jogged the length of this final building, stopping next to a eight-foot-tall billboard and looking down at the street four stories below. There was single car with a red light flashing on the inside sitting down the road, past the intersection that his current building sat on; this car was directly in front of the stairs that were supposed to lead to a subway, apparently. Part of the road on the way to the subway was blocked by a tanker that had crashed into the building on the other side of the street, flames burning from where the tanker had been practically gutted by the force of the collision.

"Well, this is a good a place as any. Either I make it and I have to kill myself, or I fall and make myself into fried Leon." Leon thought out loud, staring down at the burning tanker and the building it had smashed into around seventy feet away.

The blonde amnesiac backed up, rubbing his bare palms together while sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth in concentration, his eyes focusing on the roof across the street. "Okay…okay, I can do this…at the very least, I hope I land on something soft…" Leon muttered a quick prayer, and then took off running at the fastest speed that he could reach with the mindset of "I shouldn't be doing this." Seconds from hitting the edge, he thought about slamming on the breaks. But by the time he got ready to stop, he was already stepping off the ledge, pushing off with as much strength as he could muster in a few milliseconds of indecision. He sailed off of the building, flying in a tall arch through the air. He hit the peak of his jump about midway through the street below, and started to drop. _Fast. _

"Hooooly SHI-" Leon didn't finish, smacking face-first into the brick wall. His lower lip split, his eyes snapping closed at the dizzying hit as he slowly peeled backwards from the wall, falling head-first onto the ground from twenty-five feet in the air. Thankfully nothing broke; besides the ears of a few children, if they had been there, because of his choice words. And his pride.

He slowly picked himself up, groaning as he cracked his nose back into place. "Ow…" He muttered, looking up at the roof that he had thought he was going to land on. It was around forty feet up, and he had only missed by almost fifteen feet. The man glowered, standing back up with his eyes focused on the lip of the roof. He bent at the knees, nearly completely going into a feral crouch. He curved his spine forward, craning his neck to keep the roof in sight.

He pushed with every bit of energy he had gathered in his legs, and _soared_.

His arms pin wheeled in the air as he overshot the roof by a good forty feet, doing a few accidental back flips with his body completely straight while he was at it. Somehow, he managed to land on his feet, teetering backwards on the edge for a few brief seconds before redistributing his weight and stumbling forward until he was a safe distance from the ledge. He froze at a quiet exclamation of "dude."

He spun around, his eyes going wide when he caught sight of Paul standing on the roof he had originally leapt from. "Dude!" Paul called, louder this time after seeing that he had Leon's attention. "You've gotta teach me how to do that!"

_**:::Ten Minutes Later:::**_

Leon had managed to jump the gap between the streets on his second try; he now knew how much strength was needed to clear the distances, even if he overshot by a few feet and had to roll to absorb whatever momentum he didn't need any longer. He had followed Paul back to their campsite, silent. It was worse when they reached the tent, though.

"How'd you find me?" Was Leon's first question. Paul was oddly calm, something that was more unnerving than the older man actually catching Leon in the act of trying to learn to fly.

"It wasn't hard." The other man responded. "You smacking into a brick wall thirty feet in the air was pretty loud. Just had to follow your voice." Leon nodded, he could accept that.

"How much did you see?"

"Enough to know that you can put a Hunter's pounce to shame…is that why you left the tent?"

"I was trying to figure something out. _I _thought _you _were _asleep_." Paul nodded at that point.

"I was. But you snore when you sleep, and I guess I'm just used to hearing it now when _I'm _asleep. The silence was a little…uh, creepy? Yeah, creepy I guess." Paul shrugged. "Then you know the rest. So, my turn?" Leon nodded slowly, uncertain. "Good. First question. How'd you do that?" Leon spent the next eight or so minutes explaining to Paul. Explaining about how he found the journal, and its contents. And what the contents meant for him.

"Well, something good _did _come out of me finding the book." Leon said with a strained chuckle. Paul frowned, cocking his head. "I'm now positive that I'm Leon." He tried chuckling again, but this time the sound came out more as a weak cough.

"Leon, this isn't really a time to be laughing." Leon looked up from the spot he had picked on the roof to stare at for the past ten minutes.

"You don't think this is weird or stressful for me either?" He snapped. "I wake up, in an _apocalyptic America_, with no memories, covered in blood, and abandoned in a hospital! I don't remember my past, don't even remember my own name! And then I learn that I'm one of the _things_ that humans are trying to kill? And you expect me to not find it stressful for myself?" Paul blinked, watching with a calm face as Leon flipped a metal folding table they had picked up at the store, the table spiraling right off the roof to smash into the police car down on the road, taking out a few Common Infected with it. His simple and momentary hysterical breakdown left him panting, glaring daggers at nothing; unbeknownst to him, his irises had began to take on a bright yellow glow, but pointing this out was probably not the best idea at the moment.

"…better now?" Paul asked after giving Leon another minute or so to calm his breathing.

"No." Leon growled, his irises slowly bleeding back to their normal hue. "But I'm working on it." Paul clapped his hands together.

"Good! Because I'm tired, and going back to bed. You coming, or are you going to stay out here and murder a few more of our tables?" Leon frowned, making a funny face at the man.

"You're not gonna shoot me 'tween the eyes?" He asked. "Kick me off the roof? _Anything?_" Now it was Paul's turn to make a funny face.

"Why would I?"

"Uh, my status as an Infected?" The blonde man offered.

"Oh, that. Pfft, you're nothing like other Infected. So long as you don't start chewing on my arm in the middle of the night I'm good. We can talk more about this later, if you're really dead-set on me taking some sort of action. But to me, you haven't changed. Well, besides you suddenly becoming superhuman, but I had my hunches already, remember? So, Mr. Predator, I'm going to bed. You do what you want." He pointed a finger at Leon, screwing up his face into a mock scowl. "Don't wander to far, or I'll go buy you a collar and tie you up at night, doggie-pet." Leon slapped the finger away, marching into the tent.

"I'm not a dog!" He called. Paul, however, ignored him, opting to run into the tent.

"Honey, the pet is peeing on the bed again!"

"I'M NOT A PET!"

"You didn't deny pissin' on my bed!"

"GREEH, SHUT UP!"

_**:::The Next Morning:::**_

"Okaaay…" Paul said, reading and re-reading the first entry on the Predator. "It says here that you're strong." He pointed over the ledge of the roof to where a Tank was making its way down the road. "Go rip him in half." Leon slowly looked over the edge of the building, before backing away.

"Yeah, that thing may say I'm strong, but I'm not going to trust any of those words until I've done something of equal proportions with less danger to confirm it myself. That entire thing is theory!"

"Well, the jumping thing was right!" Paul muttered, but moved on. "Okay, if you don't want to do that, why don't we work on your jumping?" Leon paled for a split second, before shaking his head.

"Don't want to. Remember what happened yesterday?" He _swore _his nose had been broken, though it hadn't swollen and had snapped right back into place.

"Well, if you don't train in your jumping then how do you ever plan on getting better at it?" Leon nodded slowly, agreeing even though one of the last things he wanted to do was start jumping off of buildings. Plus, he had the distinct feeling that he had trained a lot for a long time - which made sense because the dog-tags had to mean _something _- and that it had become a sort of routine.

So that's what led to Leon falling off of buildings for eighteen hours straight. He had gotten better at his jumping - judging them, getting the right amount of strength, figuring out how to vary his leaping speeds, sticking the landings without falling over and sliding on his face _again_ - over the hours, so much so that he could now leap from one building to another for the most part, sometimes even being able to skip buildings if he jumped long and high enough.

There had been a point where he had jumped to one building and then another, and Paul wouldn't let Leon come back to the apartment for lunch until the blonde Infected jumped from the building he was currently on and directly to their own "home." Leon had tried and tried, over and over, for nearly two hours. He had finally had enough, and in that instance, he had backed up, crouched on all fours, and then leapt with an inhuman roar of annoyance, sounding much like a Hunter's scream that was deeper and slightly more monstrous. He had landed, hands first, pulling into a forward handspring, flipping onto his feet and nearly losing his balance. He had made it to the apartment roof. Had nearly overshot it, actually. Needless to say, he had gotten his lunch, and also gained the knowledge that he could jump further and faster on all fours than just on two legs. And had Paul come this close to shitting himself. That was always a bonus.

He slept like a baby after that, if only to escape the fact that Paul was going to wake him up bright and early to find out what else he could do.

_**:::Three Weeks Later:::**_

"There's a Hunter around. Just to give you a warning." Leon said right after landing from his jump from the building over. Paul looked up after a few seconds, finally pulling his eyes away from the broken flashlight he was trying to fix. After three weeks, he had gotten mostly used to Leon suddenly appearing from what seemed like nowhere. _Mostly_.

"Okay. And this concerns us how?" Leon pointed over his shoulder, down the road and past the partially-destroyed barrier.

"Because there's a lot of Infected activity that's headed this way?" He offered. He paused, sniffing the air just to make sure his hunch was correct. "They're following a group of Survivors that have been doing circles in the city for a while. They're headed this way, finally."

"Probably has something to do with the helicopter that passed through earlier. The one issuing orders to head to Mercy Hospital for evac." Paul mused. Leon snorted, plopping down in the chair across from the older man.

"Every Infected in the city is going to be headed there. It's suicide."

"They probably know that. And even if they don't, it's not like there's much of a choice. There hasn't been any news about any other nearby evacuation centers." Paul sighed. "Still, unless they have good teamwork and know what they're getting themselves into, they're going to have a difficult time."

"'specially since there's a few Tanks centered around Mercy Hospital." Paul flashed Leon a confused expression. "Scouted out the area a few days ago. Saw a few Tanks, scented the others." Paul nodded in understanding. "Anyway, back to the problem at hand…there's a Hunter that's been moving this way. Trying to find the Survivors, I expect. Just wanted to warn you so you can be on your guard in case the jumpy bastard decides to pounce you."

"And if Hunter-buddy decides to set his sights on you?"

"Then we'll have a dog fight on our hands, and I'll bite out his throat." Leon deadpanned. Paul scrunched up his nose in disgust.

"More like a cat fight." Paul chuckled, before ducking out of the way of a thrown, full can of frozen ravioli. "Meow! O-oi!" The older man struggled as Leon wrapped his arm around his throat in an attempt to choke him out.

Leon's grip suddenly slackened, his eyes going alert as he stared off into space with an otherwise blank expression.

"Hey…something-MMPH!" Leon silenced his comrade with a gloved hand, snapping out of his trance to lock eyes with Paul. He brought a finger up to his lips.

"Shh. Tank." Leon whispered, tuning his sensitive sense of hearing into the quiet snuffling and bull-like grunting of the largest Special Infected. He quickly found this to be a mistake, though, when loud gunfire from right down the road overtook the sound of the nearby Tank, his eardrums nearly shattering at the unexpected noise and its intensity. He released Paul all the way, dropping down into a crouch while clapping his hands over his ears. "Shit!" He growled, waving off Paul's silent offer of help. Right as Leon managed to block out the gunfire so it sounded more like water dripping into a puddle, another sound reached his ears. "Duck." He deadpanned, flattening himself to the roof's surface. Paul hesitated, but lay flat next to him, right in time to dodge a few flying Infected and a spinning car.

"The hell? Are they evolving into flying ones now?" Leon looked over his shoulder, catching a glance of one of the flying Infected's face; blank, staring forward dumbly. Right before it smacked into a building and was shredded by the glass of a broken window.

"No, they're Common."

"Thank God." Paul muttered, grunting as he pushed himself to his feet. "I don't think I'm ready to deal with flying Infected." Leon said nothing, brushing his bangs out of his eyes to get a better view over the ledge of the roof.

"Yeah, well you should be ready for this, it's not to difficult." Leon pointed over the side of the roof, wincing as somebody got pounced from behind by a Hunter. "The Survivors are coming near. We should hide."

"Uh…why?"

"We're on a heavily-fortified roof."

"And?"

"They might make their way up here."

"So what?"

"They're armed to the teeth to fight Infected."

"Aaaaand?" Leon pointed to himself.

"Infected."

"…ah…point taken…we should hide."

"Thank you for seeing my point." Paul opened his mouth to respond, but stopped to look around. He smirked.

"So, smart guy. Where should we hide?" Leon frowned, turning to stare at the painfully-open roof with no place to take cover.

"…shit."

* * *

><p>And there we have it. Random second chapter. Didn't really like the ending, but I know how I want the third chapter to start, and it has to be right after what just happened…I'm so tired that that made sense in my head but doesn't make sense in person. I mean said out loud. God I need a nap…<p>

So not gonna happen. :3

_**~Kitsune-242**_


	3. BLACKOUT

Disclaimer: Disclaimed.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

**BLACKOUT**

"Up the ladder up the ladder! Go, go, go!" Bill ordered, using his dual pistols to pick off the Common Infected one by one. He hoped that, at the very least, his teammates would make it up the ladder to the roof, and safety.

"Pfft, like I'd let you beat me on the Infected-count, Old Man! Up you go!" Francis snapped back, turning briefly to kick Bill in the direction of the fire escape ladder, turning just in time to dive out of the way of the swinging fist of the Tank. "HELL!" The Tank's overgrown fists made it lose balance, causing the behemoth to topple into a wall, dazed. Francis, taking advantage of the Tank's distraction, backed towards the fire escape. He wheeled about, trying to take out every Common with the least amount of ammunition possible; but the problem with Common Infected, was that they could pop out of practically nowhere. A Common that had pulled just the trick when Francis turned his back crumpled to the ground, two bullet holes directly through the top of its head.

Francis looked up, nearly being blinded by a bright streetlight that was visible over the edge of the roof. "Go, I'll hold them off!" Zoey cried, more gunshots following as Commons dropped next to him. Francis leapt into the air, reaching as high as he could on the ladder and scrambling up the rest of the way, giving Zoey a quick pat on the back as he passed her.

Once at the top, he marveled at what he saw. It was surprisingly simple, yet in the world that he was growing accustomed to, it was heaven. Guns and ammo galore, a pile of food and drinks, and a large tent that could easily fit the entire group. The stock of ammunition alone nearly set the biker drooling. His fantasy was cut short when the sound of shredding metal tore right through his thoughts. He spun around, just glimpsing Zoey's face as she fell out of sight. He dashed to the edge of the roof, Zoey coming back into his range of vision; her hand outstretched, her eyes wide as the fire escape fell away from her feet.

"Francis!" She cried. Francis leaned over, gripping the ledge tightly as he made a mad grab for her hand. His fingers brushed her wrist…and she just kept falling, her hand slipping right out of his slick grip. Her eyes widened a fraction of an inch, everything slowing down for the group as she fell away, down towards the Tank that was already recovering from his fall, and the Common that was swarming the metallic wreckage. Zoey was going to fall down to either death-by-pavement or death-by-cannibalism, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Without any warning, something shot past the trio, diving right over the ledge of the building without even hesitating. The figure dropped faster than Zoey, falling like a stone. Strong arms wrapped around her, and right before Zoey and the figure smashed into the pavement, the length of thick rope wrapped around the figure's waist snapped them back up towards the roof like a bungee cord, Commons reaching for their feet a second to late. The rope didn't have enough elasticity to bring them back up to the roof, so the figure reached out with one hand when they reached the height of their flight, long fingers wrapping around a protruding windowsill. For a few seconds, the Survivors - and Zoey's savior - were silent - Zoey was shaking from the sudden fright and adrenaline, her teammates were still trying to get their brains to catch up to the current events, and the mysterious savior was releasing a sigh of relief. It was the savior that broke the silence.

"Paul?" A deep, male voice called from the shadows that cloaked the side of the building. "Not that I _don't _like dangling by my fingers over a horde of hungry bastards and a freaking _Tank_…but can you please, oh, I dunno, give me a hand?" Loud clapping echoed from behind the three male Survivors, causing them to jump, startled. "Oh, very funny. _Very _original. I can hang here all day, you know, but this lady here seems to be in shock, and could probably use some water." The clapping continued. "You're a dick…" The man grumbled, suddenly releasing the windowsill. Before they could fall more than a foot, the man wrapped his now-free hand up in the rope around his waist, and planted his feet on the side of the building, walking up the wall slowly but surely. He kept Zoey close, not letting her get even close to slipping from his grip.

Once at the top, Bill and Louis rushed forward, pulling Zoey up and leaving the blonde to heave himself up. While Bill and Louis checked on Zoey, Francis watched as the stranger stood up, and stalked over to another man that had appeared on the roof from nowhere. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to help." The obviously older man began to mock-choke, flailing about. "You're _so _funny." The savior growled, sarcasm dripping from his words. The other pointed dramatically.

"WRONG SIR!" He cried; Louis, Bill, and Zoey all jumped, having not been watching the exchange or expecting the sudden shouting. "I'm _hysterical." _The blonde slapped the other man on the back of the head.

"Leave me to haul myself up a vertical wall with only one arm and a woman in the other again, and I'll be throwing _you _over the side of the building to the Tank." He looked down, frowning in disgust at the thick rope, which turned out to be a severed Smoker's tongue. "And you'll be the one with a Smoker-Tongue belt." He grumbled, slicing the long muscle off of his waist with a large knife that he had pulled from between his jacket and shirt. He slid the knife back into wherever it had been hidden beforehand, and looked to the Survivors, staring at them as if they didn't notice. "What should we do with them?"

"Hey, they're your responsibility." The younger of the duo snapped his head to the side to glare at the other. "You wanted to save them, not me! So by default, they're now under your protection." He paused. "Wait 'till morning and then send them on their way. That's my opinion."

"We _are _right here you know." Zoey said, speaking her first words since her near-fall.

"We know." The older man responded, before waltzing over, sticking his hand out to her; he ignored how the other three either twitched their hands towards their guns, or actually trained them on him. "I'm Paul. Nice to meet you." Zoey stared at the offered hand for a moment, before taking it, shaking it with a small smile.

"Zoey. Nice to meet another Survivor…the biker is Francis, the old man is Bill, and the man who looks more ready for an office meeting than an apocalypse is Louis."

"Fantastic!" Paul cried. "My anti-social friend over there is Leon S. Kennedy, the only guy you'll meet who's still clinging to his full name like a life raft." He gave a small chuckle, as if what he had said was one of the funniest things he had said all day.

"I can speak for myself, Paul!" The newly-dubbed Leon called from the other side of the roof, his back turned to the group as he went through a pile of assorted objects.

"Then get yer ass over here and do so, ya baby!" Paul barked back, his voice falling into a partial-country accent. He snorted when Leon fell silent. "Sorry 'bout him. He doesn't really like strangers."

"Who doesn't like strangers?" Leon asked. The group jumped, the man having snuck up behind Paul in seconds without making a sound. In his hands was a blue metal first aid kit, a white and red cross stamped on the front. "Unless I'm mistaken, you stalked me for a good half-day before actually introducing yourself."

"Not my fault you found it a good idea to walk right down the middle of the street." Paul grumbled, snatching the kit away from Leon, and handing it to Bill.

"A little big, isn't it?" Louis asked, breaking the fresh silence after only a few seconds. "Isn't it difficult to carry around?"

"We've been camping out on this roof for a _long _time. Lost count, actually." Paul said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Haven't had to carry it around."

"It has more supplies that are also of better quality than the smaller med kits that most humans carry around."

"'Most humans'?" Francis echoed, his eyes narrowing slightly in suspicion.

"…yeeeesss?" Leon dragged out the word, raising an eyebrow to accent his confusion. "You know; 'Immunes,' 'Pures,' 'Uninfected,' 'Survivors'? Humans. They're all the same thing." Leon shrugged, looking to his comrade. "Is every other Survivor this jumpy, because if they are I don't feel like finding an evac camp."

"You haven't met any other Survivors yet?" Zoey asked with a raise of an eyebrow, half occupied with bandaging her sprained ankle. Since the outbreak, her group had met quite a few different groups of Survivors, all ranging in size, age, and gender ratios.

"I have." Paul supplied. "Leon's only met me, and we've been camping out together for around three, four weeks, I think. The entire time we've been right here. There _was _a superstore just down the street…"

"Was?" Asked Bill.

"Tank." Leon deadpanned, needing no further explanation. "Unless your eavesdropping earlier didn't catch it…you all can stay 'till morning. Then you've got to leave."

"What?" Francis snapped. "We have as much a right to be here as you do!"

"You have the rights to safe rooms. But this isn't a safe room. This is _our _hideout, not yours. Be happy we're not kicking your unstealthy asses out right now."

"Why you little-"

"Sorry, sorry." Paul broke through before Francis and Leon could come to blows, the two men already glaring daggers at one another from different ends of the roof. "Leon has trust issues, and isn't the most social at the moment. You'll have to forgive him."

"Francis forgives him." Zoey said. Francis looked to Zoey, fully prepared to argue, but fell silent at the death glare that she was sending his way. "_Right,_ Francis?"

"U-uh…yeah…"

"We'll leave tomorrow morning, if that's what you want." Zoey continued. "We're just thankful that we have a place to rest until then. You know, heal, get energy, and all that." She trailed off, her small speech losing steam. Leon looked at the young woman, his blue eyes boring into her own, before he suddenly turned around. When he returned, his arms were laden with a good portion of the food and water that was in Leon and Paul's private stockpile.

"Here." He said, dumping the food at the group's feet. "We have more than enough. You may not be allowed to stay here, but that doesn't mean that you have to starve." She nodded her thanks. "Paul and I will sleep outside tonight. You all can sleep in the tent, or wherever you want."

"Oh, no, we can't take your guy's-" Leon held up a hand, silencing Louis.

"It's fine. We've slept in worse places, believe me." Paul, on the other hand, wasn't in the mood to be quite so chivalrous.

"But I don't _wanna _sleep outside! What if it rains? What if it's windy? What if a giant pillow falls from they sky and smothers us magically in our sleep?"

"Then nobody will have to hear you talk anymore." Leon responded offhandedly, already back at the food pile and rummaging through, returning with four cans, two being spaghetti in a can, and the other two being cans of green beans. He handed on of each to Paul, keeping the other two for himself.

The two groups ended up crowding around a lantern - with Paul forcing Leon - in some lopsided circle, eating their dinners in relative silence. It had started out quiet, but the noise level had built until Paul was conversing with the Survivors - mostly Louis and Zoey, with Bill and Francis adding their own commentary slightly less than the previously-mentioned duo - like they were best friends. Leon would break in a few times, and answer questions when they were asked, but didn't make much of an effort to start his own conversations. He kept more to himself, glancing from time to time at the firearms that the Survivors had arrived with.

The conversations evolved into what the Survivors had done beforehand, how they had reacted to the outbreak when it had started, and how they had met each other. Apparently Louis and Bill had met in what was _supposed _to have been an evac center, which had been overrun by carelessness of the guards, while Francis and Zoey had met while just running around, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The two groups of two had met up after that, and had conjoined to form the group of four that had been traveling together for quite a while. Paul was the one that was left to explain how he and Leon had met, Leon jumping in a few times to correct Paul; no, Paul did not jump in and save him from a Tank, no, Leon had not been crying for a savior when the Tank bitch-slapped him into a Witch, and no, Paul didn't not end up crowning the Witch with a dead bird.

"So we've all exchanged back-stories…" Louis said with a hesitant smile, turning to look at Leon, who was in the middle of trying to shove two king-sized Hershey's bars into his mouth at the same time. "…but we haven't heard yours." Leon forced down the chunks of chocolate, wiping his mouth with a slight frown.

"My name's Leon S. Kennedy. I woke up in Mercy Small-Practice Hospital, a few weeks after the Infection outbreak. I had this equipment with me," He pointed to his belt, with only the ammunition pouches bulging with its contents. "and this." He reached underneath his jacket, and pulled up the bloody dog-tags, the ones he still hadn't bothered to wash off in fear of what he'd find; what if he was some sick experiment? Why would he want to remember _that_? There was silence as he let the dog-tags fall back against his chest, the metal giving off a dull glow that reflected onto the ground by the lantern. "That's all." Again, there was silence.

"…you're kidding…right?" Francis asked. Paul sighed, going into one of his serious modes.

"Sadly he's not. Leon's suffering from severe amnesia. Can't remember anything. He wouldn't have even remembered his name if it wasn't for the dog-tags, and even _that _was a little shaky until he found something that confirmed that he's Leon. He only got a flash of a memory of somebody calling him "Leon" around a week ago. So his back-story's a little blank at the moment. We're working on filling it in, though. Haven't gotten much…"

"A few flashes of crap I can't quite make out or put together, I was on the Raccoon City Police Department at one point for an undetermined amount of time, my name, and I have a sweet-tooth. That's all I know." He paused. "And I apparently like guns."

"Oh…I'm sorry…" Zoey muttered slowly, looking around awkwardly.

"Don't be. Can't miss what you can't remember." Leon grunted, stabbing a plastic fork at a Hershey's kiss the size of his fist; the fork just broke off its tines, leaving the white plastic jutting out of the chocolate at odd angles. "Awwww…" He whined, before tossing the hunk of chocolate off the roof. "Eh, didn't want it anyway." Unseen to the group, was the fact that the point of the kiss sliced through the gut of a Boomer; they _did _feel the explosion however, making the Survivors jump, and Paul roll his eyes. He leaned over to Leon while the Survivors were distracted.

"Why don't you do something _really _odd; not this "kill a Boomer without looking with a piece of chocolate" crap! Why don't we just scream to the world that you're not normal?" He hissed.

"Oh relax, they don't even know what that was." Leon replied, quickly pushing Paul away before the Survivors would notice. "I'm going to bed." He announced, climbing to his feet and walking to the ladder that would bring him to the roof of the building over. "I'll keep watch for a few hours, so feel free to go to bed." He added once he got to the roof, then dropped out of sight.

"I think I'm going to go to bed, too." Zoey said, standing. "I call the tent!" In the end, it was decided that Zoey would get the zip-off section of the tent, and the three male Survivors would share the main part. Paul had decided that he would sleep right outside the tent, for two reasons. One, to keep a lookout for any Infected who might think of climbing up onto the roof - though none had really tried that as of yet - and two, to make sure that the Survivors didn't wander off in the middle of the night. Not only would it be annoying to have to go and find them and rescue them if they got attacked without the proper backup, but if they went searching for Leon, he didn't want to have to explain why Leon was missing. He knew that Leon hadn't really gone to bed, or even sat down to keep watch. No, Leon was off doing his Infected thing.

_**:::With Leon:::**_

The amnesiac jumped again, sailing through the air, perpendicular with the ground. He landed heavily, bending his knees to absorb some of the impact before rolling with his momentum, popping right back up after rolling twice to continue on in a lazy jog, his eyes scraping the towering landscapes of the center of the city. He had to be careful when patrolling this area; there was supposedly a Survivor camp that had recently been established underground around here, with sentries posted on the roofs of buildings _everywhere_. If anybody caught him jumping, they'd take him for a Hunter and try to shoot him on the spot. The Infected was, to a certain degree, bulletproof, but he didn't want to find out if he shared their defense against metal projectiles.

'_If there is a Survivor camp here, I can give those other Survivors a map to this area. Get them out of my hair.' _Leon thought, tilting his head slightly to scent the air. The scent of human was fresh, but held a hint of _something _that he wasn't fond of. Leon frowned, his eyebrows lowering in confusion. This wasn't a scent he had picked up and memorized before, but it still smelt familiar, as if he should know it but didn't. _'What is this scent? Why can't I remember it?' _For a second, Leon wrote it of as amnesia. But something didn't make sense. _'But I didn't have this acute sense of smell when I was human, and I was a human before I lost my memory…right? Or was I already Infected when I got konked on the noggin?' _He shook his head with a growl. _'Screw this, I'm going to give myself a headache.' _Oops, to late.

Leon leapt down from the two-story building, rolling against to absorb the impact. Thankfully, there were no Infected in the area, so drawing his pistol would have been a waste of energy. The lack of Infected, though, reinforced the rumor that a Survivor camp was nearby. _'Paul said that it was underground…' _Leon thought, peaking his head around the corner of the stairs that would lead down into part of the subway tunnels. _'I'll just run in, take a quick peek, and then run back out. Nobody will know I was there…I'll be fine…' _Leon snorted_. _"Famous last words." He mused out loud, before trotting down the stairs, trying to keep his gait as quiet as possible. When he reached the bottom, he darted into the shadows, relying on the dark colors of his clothes to keep himself mostly hidden. He crept forward, keeping his nose and ears alert, searching for any signs of life.

After twenty minutes of searching the winding tunnels, he _still _came up with nothing. "This isn't right…" Leon muttered, opening his mouth a fraction of an inch and inhaled, his sense of taste amplifying the scents and making everything stand out more. When it came to his sense of smell, it was like comparing two Tvs; a normal TV being just his sense of smell, and an HD TV representing his smelling sense mixed with his taste sense. The scent that hit his nose and tongue sent him reeling, his hands snapping up to clap over his nose and mouth. He had expected the scent of humans, not death and decay. _'Why do I keep doing that?' _He whined, blinking away the tears that had started to gather in his eyes.

The smell of death didn't bode well in Leon's mind, but still he continued on, now using the scent of death and the strange scent as his guide. He arrived in a subway station, copses strewn everywhere. He couldn't hear one beating heart, not a single one.

At first, the man thought it was the Infection that had caused all the death. But the familiar scent of the Infected clung to not even one of the bodies. It was something else, something that made an animalistic growl that frightened Leon rise from his chest. He bared his teeth like some threatened animal, clenching his hands into fists and unclenching them to flex his fingers. His shoulders rose and his shoulder blades jutted out of his skin, his toes curling in his boots to scrape at the sole of his shoes. The scent nearly sent the man into a fury, and the thought of losing control over a simple scent scared the amnesiac more than anything he had witnessed since waking up. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind - he didn't know where, and he didn't know why, but he knew - that losing control was not something he wanted to do, something that wasn't an option. Going _berserk_ wasn't and option.

'_Berserk…' _Leon thought, turning away from the bodies and marching away while trying to find something that would distract him from the scent. _'Berserk…Berserker…' _For some reason, the name seemed to fit whatever he was imaging. Berserker; that was him when he lost all semblance of his sanity and humanity, when he wasn't in control, but the Infection.

He exited the subway the same way he had entered, leaping to a balcony above to avoid a diving Hunter; apparently the smell of death hadn't attracted only him. Commons were beginning to roam the streets, and unless he was mistaken, he could see a Witch slowly making its way through the shadows, the female Infected plopping down ever few feet to sob her eyes out, not getting up unless she thought nobody was watching her.

"_Leon…" _A voice whispered on the wind, almost to quiet for the man to make out. Leon frowned at the sound; it was Paul, he was certain of that. The man was calling him, back from their roof with the other Survivors. _"Leeeeoooon…" _Leon promptly ignored him, leaping up and swinging onto a balcony, continuing this way until he reached the roof. _"…Leon…" _Again, ignored. _"MR. GRACEFUL!" _Leon glared at the jab at his first attempt at jumping - his nose still sometimes hurt whenever he thought of the brick wall - but released his most Hunter-like scream, hoping that Paul would understand and stop calling him. He would go back to the roof with the Survivors that would kill him on the spot if it just meant that Paul would stop calling him. _"…was that you?" _Apparently Paul _didn't _know Leon wanted him to shut up.

'_Who else sounds like a deep-voiced Hunter?' _Leon thought, screeching again. After all, Hunters had a much higher-pitched screech than Leon, Leon's being a bit lower by maybe an octave or two.

"_Okay, that was you. Return to the roof, would you? And stop screeching!" _

'_You piss me off, I piss you off.' _Leon thought, screaming once more. No matter how much he hated making the sound, he wouldn't pass up the chance to tick off Paul.

"_You're going to wake the Survivors, you know!" _Paul's voice echoed off the buildings, carrying a mocking tone. That shut Leon up good, just as Paul knew it would. The man glowered at nothing, gathering energy in his legs for the return trip.

Hopefully he'd be able to get back without any of the Survivors noticing his absence, or the manner in which he would return.

_**:::Back at the Hideout:::**_

"Where are the Survivors?" Leon whispered, just in case one or more of the Survivors had good hearing. Not like they'd have an easy time picking out different words; Paul had climbed up the ladder to the adjacent roof to meet Leon where the man would most-likely return to.

"In the tent. Sleeping, hopefully. And if they know what's good for them. They'll need energy for tomorrow, what with the Infected beginning to swarm the only evac site for cities." Paul nodded back towards the tent. "Did you go and check out the Survivor camp like I asked?" Leon hesitated, nodding slowly. Should he tell Paul? The man had been excited at the idea of a camp of humans in the middle of the destroyed city…was it really a good idea to give him the news?

"Yeah…"

"Well? Were the rumors true?"

"They _were_…past-tense." Leon said, ignoring the way Paul's expression fell. "All of the Survivors were dead. Most of them seemed to have been dead for a while, too." He paused. "But there's something that's a little troubling…"

"Being?" Paul asked, snapping out of his momentary depression. He had thought that the camp had been a rumor, so not like he could miss anything that he hadn't believed in in the first place. And wallowing in pity didn't do much good in the world that he was currently living in; pay respects, and then move on. That was the smartest action.

"There was a scent I couldn't place." Leon began slowly. "It was unfamiliar. I…I feel like I've smelled it before, but I can't remember from where."

"Probably from before your amnesia. Don't worry, kid, it'll come back eventually."

"And if I don't like what I find when it _does _come back?"

"Then deal with it then. Until that comes, focus on more important things." A grin slowly spread across Paul's face. "Like who's going to get the last sleeping bag!" He cried, whipping around and running like a toddler to the ladder, sliding down it as fast as he could. He spun around, fully intent on claiming the last sleeping bag…only to find Leon already spreading it out by the still-lit lamp, smoothing out wrinkles and placing the built-in, cushiony, poor-excuse-for-a-pillow at just the right angle. Leon looked up, the corners of his mouth kicking up into a smirk.

"Hey." He deadpanned, before flopping down onto the "cushiony goodness"(as proclaimed by Paul later on when the man was complaining) on his side, with his back to the older man.

"So where am I supposed to sleep?" Leon's free shoulder rose and fell in a type of half-shrug, leaving Paul standing in silence. He looked forlornly at the cold cement surface of the roof, not finding the dark gray and solid substance very appealing.

"Heads up." Paul wasn't fast enough. He was smacked in the face by the unrolled sleeping bag that Leon had been laying on a few seconds prior.

"Uh…"

"Here, you can use it." Leon said, dusting off his pants while pulling his jacket back on; he had taken it off before spreading out the sleeping bag, just to be more comfortable. "I don't need it."

"But you're tired to, aren't you?" Leon flashed a brief but genuine grin.

"One upside to being the Predator is a reduced need for sleep. I said I was going to keep watch for a while, and with somebody sleeping out in the open, that's just what I'll do. Don't worry, I'll wake you a few hours before dawn for your watch. That gives you about…" Leon glanced at the watch he had snapped around his wrist a few weeks ago, having been surprised to find one that still actually worked and had the correct time. "…five hours." The Infected nodded to the sky, drawing Paul's attention to the moon. He could practically see it creeping across the sky, counting away his minutes of sleep. "Better get crackin'."

Paul didn't have to be told twice, and lay down on the sleeping bag. Not five minutes after he closed his eyes, he was asleep, snoring away. Leon winced. Thankfully, Paul's snoring didn't register to the Infected as a sound that prey made, so the man's snoring never called swarms of Infected like car alarms did(Something Leon would never admit was that even _he _found the sounds of a car alarm a bit…alluring. Like it was calling to him, and he just _had _to go and investigate. And then kill whatever was making the noise that made his ears want to bleed.). But the loud noise never ceased to make Leon worried that an Infected would finally answer the call.

Two hours before dawn, Leon woke Paul up just like he had promised. He had given the man an extra two hours of rest, earning a glare from the man at his own lack of time to sleep. Leon had just chuckled, snuggling into the sleeping bag until it was pulled clear over his head, his blue eyes glowing ominously from the shadows as he stared out at Paul like some cat.

"Stop doing that, it's creepy." Paul had said, earning another chuckle, and the eyes disappearing as Leon's eyelids slid over his eyes. Sleep came easy for the man, his more animalistic and Infected instincts whispering that he had nothing to fear, unless a Tank or a Witch decided to attack him. He was a predator, and a predator should never fear being attacked by what should be its prey.

Paul's watch passed in relative silence, the man occasionally pulling the trigger of his pistol while trying to get a headshot on a few of the Commons that still wandered the road below. Out of the fifty-two shots he made, only five were actual headshots, ones that made the heads of his targets burst. A few times he shot them in the head but their heads stayed intact. That didn't count as a headshot, according to the rules that he and Leon had agreed with when they had gotten bored one afternoon. The other times he either missed, or hit their shoulders or chests.

After an hour, the Survivors began to wake up, their whispering from inside the tent being evidence of that. Ten minutes after the whispering first started, Zoey crawled out, followed by Bill. A groggy Louis followed six minutes later, leaving just Francis to sleep away in the tent on his own. "Where's the other guy? Uh…Leon?" Zoey asked, her sleep-fogged mind trying to recall the name of the man who had saved her. Paul pointed over his shoulder at the sleeping bag on the ground, not looking away from the street below in case a Hunter of Smoker decided to try and get in a staring match with him. Or a Boomer, but he doubted that Infected's long-range attack could reach all the way to the roof.

"He woke me up around an hour ago for my watch. He's sleeping right now."

"He kept watch _all night_?" Bill asked, incredulous. "Wouldn't he have nodded off by then?" What with the apocalypse, energy was used up quickly, leaving almost none to stay up to the early hours of the morning, even if it was fueled by the threat of death.

"Uh, no. He took a nap yesterday afternoon when the Infected in the area began to clear out." Paul lied. "Now that I think about it, it was probably the Tank and Witch coming into the area that had made them all scatter." Well, it wasn't a _complete _lie. The Common Infected and most of the Special Infected _had _left yesterday, and it probably _had _been on account of the two more powerful Specials.

"How'd you know there was a Witch?" Bill asked, trying to sound nonchalant. They hadn't mentioned the Witch yesterday. At least, not to his knowledge.

"Heard her screaming bloody murder." Another lie, but he couldn't exactly say that Leon had heard her crying, scream, then suddenly fall silent after she had been shot twelve to many times. "Francis still asleep?" Asked the middle-aged man, trying to change the topic as best he could without making it obvious that that was his plan.

"Yeah." Zoey said, before yawning. "Sleeping…something I wish _I _could be doing right now…"

"Then, uh, why don't you?"

"Have a schedule ground into my head now." Was her simple answer, one that Paul could understand. Sleep was something that was usually rare to come by, and long hours of continuous sleep was practically impossible now.

"Speaking of internal schedules…" Grumbled a voice from the sleeping bag, the bag rippling as Leon, who was still hidden underneath the thick layers of cloth, moved out from where he had curled up in the last two feet of the bag, crawling out of the remaining five feet so that most of his body was pulled out of the bag. He rolled over onto his back, tilting his head to look "up" at Paul. "…mine sucks."

"It's only been an hour, kid. Go back to sleep."

"Nope." Leon grunted as he pushed himself to his feet, stretching his arms over his head. "I'm good."

"You didn't sleep the night before."

"Your point?"

"You only slept for one hour."

"Still not seeing your point."

"…if I had any NyQuil I'd drug your ass until you're so high you think you're riding unicorns and crapping rainbows."

"If I _was _riding unicorns and crapping rainbows, that would mean that I'm still awake, and therefore causing you to fail in your mission in drugging me."

"Stop talking like that."

"Bite me."

"Give me your hand and I will."

"Screw you sideways with a cactus."

"Well, look who's the five year old _now_."

"A five year old with a _gun." _Leon pulled out his pistol, aiming it at Paul's left eye. "You should really lock this thing up when you let kids play in the house."

"Stop pointing that gun at me or you're grounded." Leon stamped his foot on the ground like a child having a temper tantrum, his face completely blank the entire time.

"Meanie poopy-head jerk-face!" Still with a blank face.

"Grow up!"

"Smoker."

"Smoker? That makes no- oi oi oi, don't pull the trigger- GAH!" Paul yelped, ducking as Leon pulled the trigger twice, the bullets flying from the barrel of the gun that nobody had seen be switched off of safety mode. A hollow pop sounded from the other side of the road, a puff of green smoke being the only evidence that anything had been there in the first place. "COULDN'T YOU HAVE GIVEN ME A WARNING?"

"I did."

"Something better than 'Smoker!' Like 'duck!'"

"Duck."

"A little late now!"

"Better late than never."

"That doesn't apply to when you're shooting at something DIRECTLY BEHIND ME HEAD!"

"Hm." Leon grunted, staring at where the Smoker had been. He had barely noticed the Smoker until he had heard its raspy breathing that signaled it would be attacking soon. So the Special Infected were getting stealthier. Smarter. At least, the Smoker was. Hopefully there would be a loss of aggression with their increase in intelligence. Maybe that was what happened to him; insane and blood-thirsty until he regained his intelligence. But if that was the case, then how many people died, how many people did he kill?

"'ello? Earth to Leon, come in Leon!" Paul's voice broke through his thoughts, the blonde man snapping to attention with a blink. He stared at the hand that was waving in front of his face with a frown.

"What?"

"You zoned out. And it's breakfast time!" Paul held up one of the remaining boxes of Lucky Charms, shaking it with a grin. Leon snatched the box away, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. If Paul had touched even _one _of the marshmallows…

But Paul was already prancing - yes, prancing - away, handing out food to the other Survivors. Absentmindedly, Leon flipped open the box, reaching his hand in to pull out a handful of the cereal. He used his thumb to push most of the cereal bits back into the box, tossing the marshmallows into his mouth.

"Eating only marshmallows?" Louis asked from where he sat in one of the chairs. "That's not healthy."

Surprising everybody on the roof, including himself, Leon stuck his tongue out at the man, before shoving another handful of marshmallows down his throat, every move being dramatic. That is, until he started to gag and cough when a marshmallow went down the wrong pipe.

"Told you it's not healthy!"

"S-shut uh-p." Leon managed through his gasps, pounding on his chest until his throat was cleared. He spent a long minute just gazing at the stupid grinning leprechaun on the font of the bright box, before tossing it at a wall. "I'm done eating that crap."

"What? Rainbows and shooting stars and four-leaf clovers to scary for the big bad Infected-Predator?" Paul called over his shoulder, his play on words going right over the heads of the Survivors. He turned around to continue to mock Leon…but ducked with a loud shriek at the grinning face of the leprechaun that was only four inches away from his own face. While Paul cowered on the ground in the fetal position, Leon stared at the back of the box, mentally completing the little kid puzzles.

"Who's scared of pretty rainbows, twinkly stars, and plants _now?_"

"…you two argue like an old married couple…" Zoey muttered, snickering when Paul gave an indignant huff and Leon's left eyebrow twitched.

"Don't even joke like that!" Paul grumbled. "I have a wife!"

"Yeah, he has a wife." Leon paused. "And he'd never be able to pull all _this _off." He motioned to himself, sending Bill cackling like mad, with Zoey giggling and Louis hiding his laughter. Paul was the only one who was flailing, screaming something that nobody really paid attention to. Paul stopped, however, when the shine of mirth in Leon's eyes was quickly snuffed out. While the three Survivors continued to laugh, Leon pulled away from the group, scrambling up the ladder onto the adjacent roof and disappearing from view.

"Something wrong with him?" Zoey asked. She was the first to notice. After her comment the others stopped laughing as well, turning to Paul for an answer.

"Anti-social tendencies." Paul said with a shrug. An uncomfortable silence followed. "I'll go see what's up." He excused himself, and followed Leon onto the roof, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the Survivors were staying put. They were. With a sigh, he turned to where Leon was sitting on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling off the edge. "Okay. What's up with the mood swings? You pregnant?" Leon shot him a glare.

"I want them to leave." He growled. "_Now_." Paul frowned, crouching next to his friend.

"Why? You seemed to be liking their company a few minutes ago."

"I was. Until I remembered that they'd put a bullet in my skull if they ever found out."

"Oi oi. I never pegged you as the insecure type. Keep this up and I'll have to bring you to the counselor. Or is it the psychiatrist?" Leon didn't laugh, didn't even smile. "You don't give them enough credit, Leon. You don't know for sure if they'd try to kill you."

"It's the freaking apocalypse, Paul. With the Infected being the bad guys, and the Survivors being the good guys. Infected _try _and kill Survivors, Survivors _kill _Infected." He pointed to himself. "Infected." He pointed to the edge of the roof. "Survivors." Paul motioned to himself.

"Survivor." He deadpanned.

"You're different."

"How am I any different? I'm trying to survive just as much as them. If you look at it just as Infected and Survivors, then it would be in my best interest to kill you. But I know you, and you know me. I know that you're not bad, and if you gave the other Survivors a chance, they'd learn that you're not bad either. For an Infected." Paul added with a half-hearted grin, one Leon didn't return. "You're really hard to cheer up, you know that?" He paused. "I know the _perfect _way to get you over your fear of Survivors!"

"I am _not _afraid of a few gun-toting humans." Leon snapped. "…how?" He added meekly.

"Let's pack up camp and go with them!"

"N-"

"Hear me out first, will you? …good. They're leaving soon anyway, and we need to leave soon. The supermarket was destroyed, and without that, we're going to run out of supplies _fast_. We need to get to an evac, and don't give me any crap of you not being able to get in because you're Infected. If I couldn't tell the difference, I doubt anybody else can unless you decide to try and earn to fly in front of a soldier. Traveling in a larger group could ensure our safety, too."

"You can go with them if you want. I'm not traveling with anybody if I don't know if they're going to try and turn my face into Swiss cheese." Leon muttered while getting to his feet, practically doing a backbend until his spine popped.

"Le-"

"Nope! Not gonna do it." He glanced over his shoulder at where he could see over the edge of the roof, spying the heads of the Survivors that were now four; Francis must have woken up. About time, too. "You want to go with them? Be my guest. I'll take my chances out here with the rest of the Infected. I can outrun most of them if I have to, anyway." A pause. "Probably…I'm going for a walk." And with that, he fell backwards off of the edge of the roof. Paul dashed to the ledge, looking over as Leon jogged away at a leisurely pace, a few Common chasing after him. Whatever fate befell them was lost to Paul as Leon turned around a corner and vanished from sight.

Paul frowned. Something wasn't sitting right with him. Whatever it was, Paul had wanted to warn Leon about it. But with Leon now gone…the feeling just increased. _'I should go find him…' _He thought, biting his lip. _'If it's a Tank in the area, then…well, I don't know if Leon can take care of a Tank by himself if the situation calls for it…_' So he turned back to the roof to stock up on ammunition, already trying to formulate an excuse to tell the other Survivors as to why Leon had run off, and why he had to go look for him. Though the latter was probably easier to explain. The city _was _infected, after all. But if his gut was right, then he wouldn't need to much ammo.

Because if he was right, it wasn't a Tank.

_**:::With Leon:::**_

Against his will, an inhuman grow rumbled deep in his chest, his lips pulling back to bare his teeth as the sound wrapped around his surroundings. A few miles away, a Hunter's screech responded to the low, reverberating sound. It was at times like this that he could clearly understand what the Infected, namely Hunters, were saying through their strange communication sounds. When he was in more of a "human mood," it would feel awkward and a little unnerving, but he wasn't in a "human mood." Honestly, he was pissed.

'_How could he think that I would go along with Survivors?' _He thought, leaping over a large gap in a building that had been caused by God-knows-what. _'The people that would kill me without a second thought?' _He hadn't told Paul, but sometimes he would flinch whenever an Infected would die, whenever their head would explode in burst of blood, gore, and brain matter. It was all-to easy to picture himself as the unlucky Infected, to imagine that it was his own head that was being popped like a balloon. So what if he had a fear of the Survivors? Anybody would if the mentality of all humans was Shoot Now Ask Questions Never.

He landed in the middle of the street, crouching onto his hands and feet in the classic Hunter-pounce position, before leaning back on his feet to rest in a low crouch, reaching up a hand to rub at the back of his head. _'Jumping around like an animal isn't going to help my mood whatsoever.' _He silently amended, planting his palms on the street to push himself up onto his feet, dusting his hands off on his zipped-up jacket. The clicking of a gun behind him almost made him jump, but he refrained from doing so, quietly scenting the air.

He had thought it was Paul just messing with him, but a few things didn't match up. First of all, Paul had never followed him before when he went on one of his "walks." Ever. Second, Paul didn't usually mess around with guns behind Leon's back. They had learned early on not to do that, for it would have a bad reaction on Leon's part. Third, even _if _Paul had followed him, he wouldn't have managed to keep up, and wouldn't be where he was for a good five to ten minutes. Fourth, and lastly, was the scent in the air. It wasn't Paul's. But the scent still was familiar, carrying a vague similarity to the scent in the one Survivor hideout that had been destroyed. The same scent that had filled Leon with rage.

He spun around, baring his teeth like some enraged animal. In all essences, he was. Smelling the scent as an old, stale scent had been different than seeing, smelling, hearing, and practically tasting the thing right in front of him. Before, it had been fairly easy to push off his anger. Now, though, it was right in his face, pushing him to make some move, to take some sort of action.

Twelve guns were leveled with his head, each gun in front of the faces of twelve men - maybe even a few women, but Leon wasn't really focusing on sorting the scents into the subgroups of male and female - that were dressed all in black, in what looked like full-body riot gear that was slightly more heavy-duty. Twelve red dots from laser sights danced onto Leon's face and chest, twitching around while Leon's eyes practically glowed in the low morning light.

"Are you sure this is the target?" Asked one of the twelve that had lined up in some type of semi-circle before Leon. "It looks to…human."

"Trust me, this is it." Another responded.

'_It? I am NO IT.' _Leon couldn't help it; he growled, the sound low and monstrous in nature. The guns no longer wavered, but held steady.

"Just tranquilize, right?"

"Right. Boss wants this one alive."

Not wanting to know who this "boss" was - and honestly, being tranquilized like some zoo escapee wasn't on his bucket list - Leon leapt into action. He doubted he had time to draw his gun and fire at the hostiles. Even if he did, there were twelve men, and only one of him. He could take out a few before they would be able to pull the trigger on him. And that was if their armor wasn't bullet proof, which he was pretty sure it was. So hand-to-hand was a better option.

He darted forward, keeping low to the ground. He stuck out one of his feet when he rushed past one of the men, pausing briefly to spin on the ground. The man fell, his legs knocked from under him.

Leon leapt to his feet, turning on his heels and delivering a powerful fist to the jaw of one of the men, who spun around on his toes and dropped like a stone. Either he was horribly dazed, or unconscious. Either way, he was out of the fight for now. The first was still trying to collect himself to get back to his feet. That left ten men.

Pausing to access how many more he had to take out had been a mistake. One had darted in to try and stab at him. Literally. The knife had to be a foot and a half long, if not longer, and while their armor was made to withstand attacks, Leon's coat and skin-tight shirt underneath was not.

Leon didn't know what he disliked more; the sound of a blade slicing through flesh with a wet _squelch_, or the fact that cold steel had just bit through his left hip with very little resistance. The wound wasn't deep, but it was long, and burned horribly. Who knew if the knife had some type of chemical on it? Leon didn't stand around and wait to get hit again to try and confirm if there was something on the knife; he stuck out his leg, spinning on his grounded foot and connecting his shin with the man's - no, it was a woman - side. The wind was knocked clear out of her lungs, and she dropped, gagging and gasping for air. Three down, nine to go.

He ducked on instinct, hearing the whistle of a dart pass over his head with only centimeters to spare. He winced. Hopefully he wouldn't learn what kind of strength of tranquilizer they had filled the darts with.

To bad is luck sucked.

A dart lodged itself in his chest, right near his right shoulder. He grunted, jerking back as the dart's contents emptied into the artery it had jabbed into. The needle wasn't thin, but was thick, and as soon as he pulled the dart from his chest, blood began to spill from the thick circle that now marked his flesh.

He felt the effects of the tranquilizer right away. It didn't make him tired enough to stop, not by a long shot. It was far to weak for that. But he still felt his limbs grow heavier, felt his reflexes slow. He could take a few more of the darts before he would be out for the count.

Nine to go…

Loud gunfire exploded behind Leon, and for a split second, the blonde Predator thought that the twelve had gotten reinforcements for a fight that seemed to be tipped in their favor. But then Paul was at his side, looking over his two injuries with quick eyes, before leveling his gun on the nine that were still standing. His gun was filled with live rounds, theirs with darts. Guess who would win that fight?

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Paul demanded.

"Nobody said it was the pet of a human!" Hissed one of the nine still standing. For a moment, silence reigned.

"Fall back. We'll regroup at the set coordinates." And just like that, they were gone, splitting up and going in different directions, the standing helping drag away the three that Leon had managed to take out. As soon as they were gone, Leon wrapped an arm around Paul, and shot off of the ground. He barely made it to the roof of a four-story building to the right, dropping to his knees as soon as he landed.

Apparently, the tranquilizer had more of an effect than he had originally thought.

"Kid, you alright?" Paul demanded, putting a hand on Leon's shoulder to help support him in case Leon completely fell over.

"Give me a minute…" Leon breathed. After five minutes, Leon's labored breathing had calmed enough for him to sit down in a more comfortable position, the heel of his palm still grinding into the dart wound in his shoulder, slowing the annoyingly-swift flow of blood.

"What was going on? Why were they attacking you?" Leon was silent, settling for just pulling a crumpled piece of cloth that he had shoved in his pocket.

"I…ripped this from one of their uniforms." Leon said, grunting as he held up the cloth for Paul to take. It annoyed him how hard it was to move his limbs at that point. Whatever they had injected him with seemed to activate the more he tried to move, and his little stunt with jumping onto the roof hadn't helped.

Paul frowned, reading the white-on-black font.

"BLACKOUT?" He read. "The hell is that?"

"Check…my second dog-tag." Leon said, glancing down to the tags that were partially hidden by his jacket. "Not the one…with my name…the other one." Paul lifted the tags from the man's chest, letting the one with "Leon S. Kennedy" fall from his fingers. He squinted, trying to see through the thick layer of blood that covered the entirety of the second tag, the blood that Leon had never wanted to wash off. He tilted it a few different directions, trying to find anything that the new light angles would reveal. There! He found the angle with a few indentations visible.

"Pr***t*r" Only a few letters were legible, the others to clogged to read. But the one directly below that was much easier to read.

"BLA*KO*T"

"Blakot?" Paul read slowly. His head snapped back and forth between the dog-tag and the fraction of cloth. "Blackout!" He filled in the blanks, even though he had had a sneaking suspicion as soon as he read the second partially-blanked-out word. The rest of the tag was mostly unreadable. "BLACKOUT." Paul repeated. "So…they're tied to your past somehow."

"In a way I…probably don't want to know."

"It could have been where you worked before…you know…all this." Paul pointed out, and was met by Leon shaking his head.

"I don't think coworkers…try to shoot each other on their coffee breaks." He was finally regaining his breath - it was harder since the tranquilizer was freezing his muscles, constricting his lungs - and was able to get out more syllables at once.

"You obviously didn't work in the same company I did." At one glare, Paul announced that he was kidding. As if it wasn't obvious. "We need to get back camp. The Survivors are moving out soon, and we're going with."

"I don't want-"

"Don't gimme that shit. I was thinking about letting you rough it by yourself, but definitely not now with people trying to tranquilize you like an animal. You saw what they did when I appeared; they scattered. Obviously, they hadn't been counting on you having anybody with you. They hadn't thought that there would be others to protect you. Sticking to a group is even safer for you now, from the Infected and from whatever this BLACKOUT is." Leon wanted to protest, to have to have Paul resort to pulling him back, kicking and screaming the entire way. But he knew Paul was right. He had to face the facts; Mercy City just wasn't safe anymore despite its very ironic - at the moment - name. Some group was hunting him like game in the forest of cement and metal, and if he wanted to keep out of their clutches, and keep away from whatever they wanted him for - for he felt that it was not something he wanted to know about - he would have to move on.

So, ignoring the stiffness of his muscles and joints, Leon hefted himself to his feet, ignoring Paul's offer to help when he wobbled on his feet, his knees just not wanting to bend, his ankles not wanting to unlock and rotate. For a second, Leon just balanced. Tried to find his center of gravity. "Thanks…" He said suddenly, causing Paul to raise an eyebrow. "You didn't have to come looking for me after I snapped at you, but you did. And saved me because of that." Paul chuckled.

"No prob, kid. You're like the weird younger brother that nobody admits is family. I'd never leave you to get kidnapped by the creepers driving the big white vans." All Paul got for his efforts was a small smile, but considering the injuries that still pumped blood, and his veins that still circulated the tranquilizer through his body that increased in intensity the more he moved, that small smile was the equivalent of having Leon rolling on the ground and laughing hard enough and long enough that he threw up.

"Still, thanks. Now come on, Older-Brother-That-Annoys." Leon said, mentally filing down the name to poke fun at Paul with later. A new name for the weird tribe-like group they were starting to form. What would his be? …it was the tranquilizer making him loopy that had him thinking on such pointless topics. Hopefully.

"Aw, you're so nice! …oi, wait for me asshole!" Paul cried, racing after Leon, who had already made his way to the edge of the roof to try and leap across the street without him.

* * *

><p><strong>Yay, another chapter! Hopefully a long one, too. It's 13 pages. WAS over 17, but I took away about four pages and made that the beginning of chapter 4. Which has yet to be named…<strong>

**Hope y'all liked this chapter. It's been typed for about three months already. XD**

**Review, please!**

_**Kitsune-242**_


	4. Beginning of Mutation

Disclaimer: I. LIIIIIIIVE!

Okay, so I know I haven't updated...well...anything...in the past few months, but school takes priority to my writing. Sometimes. Okay, most of the time. And I'm taking driver's ed, so that takes up two days out of my week, and then I have to get six drives in before I can actually get my license, so...yay.

Oh, and I like to sleep. A lot. Yeah, my laziness may or may not factor into the reason that I haven't typed anything for my three fanfics yet. XD

Oh, right. I don't own Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil.

**EDIT:** *watches Resident Evil: Retribution* ... *rage mode* I HATE THESE FREAKING MOVIES THEY'RE NOT ACCURATE THEY SUCK I HATE THEM SO MUCH ALICE SUCKS! *flips out*

*watches Resident Evil: Damnation* ... HOLY ZOMBIES, BATMAN! *drools, watches second and third time*

* * *

><p><strong> Chapter 4<strong>  
><strong>Beginning of Mutation<strong>

Leon frowned, shifting his sniper from his left shoulder to his right, reclining against the brick wall that divided part of one building from another. The moon hung over his head, glowing full and bright, and it just seemed so cheerful, not concerning itself with the turmoil that the human race was experiencing.

It had been about two days since Paul had announced to the Survivors that he and Leon were heading in the same direction as them. Luckily - or in Leon's mind, unluckily - Louis had jumped at the chance of making their group bigger in hopes that the larger the number the greater of a chance that they had to survive. Francis hadn't been to happy, that was for sure, and Zoey seemed ecstatic- she and Paul had become good friends, talking about video games and horror movies like there was no tomorrow, reminiscing to the days before the world had fallen apart. Bill hadn't seemed to affected, just nodding his head, accepting it, as if he had expected it in the first place. Knowing what he knew about the man, Leon thought that he probably had expected it.

Then came the problems.

Leon and Paul had made only two people in a group. Communication and agreements came much easier when there were only two people to bounce ideas off of. Sometimes agreements had been annoying - there had been no third party to make a majority vote, after all - but they had all been dealt with quickly and with ease. Not when there was such a large group, though. Practically everybody wanted to go about everything differently, from taking a different route to Mercy Hospital, to what was more important to pack, food or ammunition. Next, was just keeping everybody alive long enough to reach the first safe-house in the subway that was literally just down the street.

Paul knew Leon was an Infected, and therefore Leon hadn't had to hide his abilities from the older man. The other Survivors, on the other hand, had no idea that Leon was technically the enemy. So ripping a Common limb from limb was out of the question. Leon was a master at using guns, but even he knew that guns could only do so much, especially when the clips would run out of bullets.

Leon glared at nothing, shifting his sniper again. The Survivors had pissed him off pretty fast in the small, enclosed space of the safe-house. Arguing had been in abundance, and Paul flailing all over the place hadn't helped- the older man was once again insisting that he had rescued Leon from a Tank before crowning a Witch with a crow carcass, and he had found it necessary to mime the "actions he had taken."

But even the problems with the Survivors couldn't pull all of Leon's attention from the task at hand.

Leon sprang from the roof of the building he had been reclining on, landing heavily on the roof of a car twenty feet below, the metal crumpling slightly, glass cracking. He waited for a minute, pausing to see if the car that had been unlucky enough to be below him had an alarm. When none went off, he nodded to himself, and slid off the top of the car, swinging the sniper onto is back, and pulling out his Desert Eagle.

Leon trotted down the road, playing with the safety on his handgun while his eyes idly scraped the shadows in search of Infected. The road was strangely empty, void of any type of Infected. The last Infected he had seen, in fact, had been a Smoke three house ago, when he had first left the safe-house when the Survivors weren't paying attention, and that Smoker had been easy enough to take out.

Leon's eyes narrowed- the last time that he hadn't seen any Infected for this long was when BLACKOUT had attacked him around three days ago. The blonde Predator began to search the shadows with more vigor, just waiting for the glint of metal to catch his eye. A gun, or some of the riot gear would reflect the light, and-

Leon's thought processes shut down at the first sign of reflected light. Without pausing, Leon sprang through the air, pouncing twelve feet into the shadows of an alley. He tackled the figure that had been holding the gun that had gotten his attention, pinning the figure down by the shoulders with his knees. Momentarily forgetting about the gun Leon reared his right arm back, his fingers subconsciously curling into claws. With a snarl, he was about to bring them down on his would-have-been assailant, when a voice broke through his concentration.

"Oi oi, don't kill me you idiot!" Leon paused, blinking slowly as his sight came back into focus in the inky shadows.

"Paul!" Leon snapped, letting his arm fall while glowering at the man. "What are you doing out here, sneaking around? I could have killed you!"

"Noticed, and I appreciate that you didn't." Paul responded, completely ignoring the fact that Leon _would_ have killed him if he hadn't spoken up fast enough. Paul suddenly grinned, waggling his eyebrows. "Wanna get off me now, or are you enjoying yourself?" Paul asked, motioning with his eyes to the fact that Leon was still perched on Paul's chest. Leon rolled his blue-green eyes, stepping off a Paul before offering his hand, which Paul gratefully accepted.

"Now seriously. Why are you out here by yourself? If I hadn't killed you, something else easily could have." Leon waved to the street, and at the plethora of dead bodies piled by a storefront nearby.

"You mean the air?" Paul chuckled. "I've been watching out the safe-house door, and I haven't spotted any Infected in hours. Besides you, of course."

"Oh, ha ha." Leon paused. "Paul, the safe-house door is in a subway tunnel. Of _course_ you didn't see any Infected, most of them stay up here!" Paul waved his hand in dismissal.

"Details. Anyway, the Survivors are going to be waking up soon, so unless you want them to be asking questions as to why you're out here, _by yourself_, and just how you got out in the first place-"

"Wonderful things, air vents."

"-you'd better get your butt back to the safe-house." Leon paused, debating on wether he should make a wise-crack or not. Leon shrugged, and instead of speaking fell into step with Paul.

"You left four Survivors, unguarded, at night, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? While all of them were _asleep_?" Leon suddenly asked, incredulous. Paul snorted.

"They got on fine without us before, they could survive the seven minutes it took me to find you...wow, there really are no Common around right now, are there?" Paul asked, his head whipping back and forth. "If you can ignore the blood stains, the dead bodies, the destroyed glass, flipped cars, and fire, then it's almost as if the Green Flu never happened."

"Minus the bustle of a city at night." Leon agreed, nodding his head. Even if he couldn't remember much else, he could still appreciate how calm it had been for the past few hours. A shrill scream erupted into the night, Leon wincing at the sharp sound and Paul just outright springing into the air at the unexpectedness of it. "Well, it was nice while it lasted." Leon sighed, checking to confirm that there was still bullets left in his handgun. This ought to be fun...

**_:::With the Survivors:::_**

Zoey had woken up first, looking around the dim room at the other sleeping Survivors. Something was wrong, it was what had woken her up. She frowned, searching the room a second and a third time. Nothing _seemed_ wrong, there were still three other around her, sleeping away- oh crap. There were supposed to be five more, not just three.

Zoey woke Bill up first, figuring that, since he had been the last to fall asleep, he'd know where the others were. But that was, apparently, not the case. "Where's Paul and Grouchy?" A shrug was the answer to Zoey's question. Soon the other two were awake, searching every crevice that the safe-house offered, even the tiny air vents. Paul and Leon were not in any of them. Bill had had his suspicions after seeing the barricade taken down from the exit from the safe-house, the bar turned at an angle that looked as if somebody had reached through the bars of the door and placed it there from the other side.

"They deserted us?!" Francis barked, waving his gun around as if it _wasn't_ a lethal weapon.

"They left their stuff, though." Louis responded, gesturing to the rolled-up tent, sleeping bags, and Leon's backpack. Paul's backpack was gone, but he had left his M16, and Paul wouldn't leave "his baby." Leon wouldn't leave his backpack, either- it was filled with to much stuff that would be valuable in an apocalyptic America. A black book was peaking out of the top, and Louis knew that Leon would definitely not leave that. According to Paul, Leon was worried that he'd lose his memory again, and that the book held a detailed list of the Infected, the best way to combat them, and also lists of the memories he had regained.

"So then where'd they go?" Zoey asked. Bill pointed at the exit door of the safe-house.

"Out there?" Louis asked. "Why would they do that?"

"A problem, maybe?"

"More like they betrayed us!" Zoey snorted at Francis's retort to her own suggestion.

"Betrayed us? Betrayed us how? It's not like the law says they have to travel with us, and they locked the door back up when leaving. There was no way they could have betrayed us." Zoey pointed out, waving at the bar over the door for emphasis.

"They took our guns!" Francis cried.

"No, they didn't." Bill muttered, picking his M16 up from where he had left it, and kicking Francis's pump shotgun over to the biker's feet. "Now stop your griping and lets go find them." Francis, grumbling under his breath, picked up his shotgun, removed the bar from the door - rather roughly, one might add - before kicking the door open, making it bounce off the wall.

Or, to be more accurately, making it bounce off of the Witch that was sitting quietly just out of sight.

The high-pitched wail of the Witch made Louis jump, Bill and Francis swear, and Zoey raise her gun in preparation. The pale female Infected shot into the room, her long claws outstretched to gut whomever had disturbed her from her silent mourning. Her eyes glowed with fury, her cracked, dry lips parter in a wild screech.

"HELL!" Zoey screamed, pulling the trigger of her handgun rapidly while reaching for a spare M16 that had been brought along. The bullets peppered the Witch, but even the dozens of bullets that drilled into her chest and head didn't stop her. Francis scrambled backwards, swearing all the while, trying to pull out a molotov he had tucked in his belt in hopes that the fire would either kill the Witch, or make her run off. Apparently he'd never learned that Witches didn't like fire.

Or that throwing a molotov in an enclosed space was one of the stupidest ideas. Ever.

"Francis you idiot!" Bill snapped, ushering Louis and Zoey out before dashing out himself. Francis followed right behind, slapping at a patch of flame that clung to his pant leg. The Witch followed him, flailing and screeching bloody murder, the flames in her hair making her look like something out of Hell itself.

"Why won't the bitch die?!" Francis demanded, raising his empty shotgun in preparation to bash the flaming Infected over the head.

A loud _CRAK_ made everybody jump, especially the Witch, considering the cracking sound was her legs crumpling under her as Leon dropped out of the sky right above her, landing with one foot on each shoulder. Leon crossed his arms after he had balanced himself on the fallen Witch. He stared at the four shocked Survivors.

"Good job handling the Witch. Really. I'm impressed." Leon commented dryly, cocking an eyebrow when the Witch twitched underneath his boots. "Even I know that catching a Witch on fire is not a good idea." He cried out suddenly, leaping away from the Witch when she swung an arm around, her claws sinking into the flesh of his right calf and shin. Paul sprinted out of an alley, pressing the barrel of his pistol to the Witch's head, unloading an entire clip into her skull.

The silence afterwards was practically deafening, Leon standing on one foot awkwardly, Paul staring at the brain matter on his hands from the Witch's now-exploded head, and the Survivors standing in various poses.

"There. _Now_ I've crowned a Witch." Paul said wiping his hand on a nearby wall with a queasy expression. "Well, close enough." He muttered.

"Are you okay?" Zoey asked slowly, walking up to Leon as he shifted his weight slightly more off of his injured leg.

"I'm fine." Leon nodded briskly, opening his mouth to continue before Paul butted in.

"Tis but a flesh wound!" He received blank stares all around, except from Zoey who was just shaking her head. "Really? None of you know that line? You've got to be kidding me!" He shook his head, clicking his tongue in disapproval. "Kids these days. Don't have any diversity from movies about bloody wars or sparkly vampires." He snorted again. "Kids...oh, and you, Bill." The veteran just grunted, pulling his medkit off his back.

"C'mere, kid. If we don't treat that wound, it can get infected." Bill said, motioning to where blood had already stained the bottom half of the right leg of Leon's pants.

"I'm immune." Was Leon's simple response.

"That's _not_ the infection I had in mind." But Bill was ignored, because Leon suddenly spun around and sprinted - or, sprinted at a normal, human speed with a heavy limp - into the remains of the safe-house.

"Who in the hell thought throwing a molotov inside of a building was smart?!" Leon snapped, echoing crashes echoing from the shell of the building as he tore through the debris, searching for his belongings. Francis laughed nervously under the number of glares focused on him.

Meanwhile, inside the shell of the building, Leon was tossing everything around like a gorilla on a rampage, using strength that no human should possess to throw beams clear over his head. Paul stood int he doorway, both to watch Leon's temper tantrum, and to make sure that the other Survivors didn't try and enter the building and catch a glimpse of feats of strength that shouldn't be possible for a "human" like Leon.

"Where is it?" Leon whispered, wrapping his arms around an armload of debris and shoving it out of the way. He had put his backpack - and with the backpack, the Infected journal - in a corner, tucked away so that, hopefully, none of the Survivors would go snooping through his stuff, and that corner had been the first he had searched. Possibly. The fire had eaten away at the walls before it had run out of fuel to keep itself going strong, and without the walls present, finding the exact location that he had placed his bag was more difficult than it should have been. He had even tried to track it through scent, but the smell of burnt wood and plaster was to strong, and was overwhelming everything. "Aha!" The man suddenly cried, pulling the black heavy-duty backpack that was partially covered in ash out of the debris. Leon pulled the the journal from the side, quickly shoving it into one of the pouches around his waist. "I'm never leaving this thing by Francis again." The blonde informed his companion after he had returned to his side, staring briefly at Francis before focusing elsewhere.

"Good thinking." Paul motioned over to the tattered remains of their sleeping bags and tent, the flames having eaten away at them until there was practically nothing left. The older man wasn't even going to try to find any of the spare guns they had brought along. Whatever they had would have to make do. Where did that leave them, exactly? Paul glanced at the firearms that the group had: one pistol each - except for Leon, since he was 99% sure that the Predator had at least three stashed away somewhere for safekeeping and emergencies - a pump shotgun for Francis, an M16 for Bill and Zoey, a tactical shotgun for Louis, and a sniper and an M16 for Leon. _'And me with only a pistol. Joy.'_ Paul mentally remarked, right before Leon thumped Paul in the chest with his M16, holding it there while staring pointedly at his friend. "What're you doing?"

"I have pistols, a sniper, and strength better than steroids. I think I can go without an M16." Paul smiled, taking the firearm from Leon.

"Thanks, I owe you one."

"Yes, you do." Leon agreed all-to readily. "And when we come across the last Hershey's bar on the planet, and you and I both want it, I'm going to be cashing it in." The blonde paused. "How'd they get attacked by a Witch, anyway? Are Witches able to open doors or something? Because if they are, that's something you've neglected to tell me, and something I haven't learned yet."

"Witches can't open doors...come to think of it, you're the only Infected who can. I asked the others, they woke up before we got back and tried to go find us. Francis kicked the door, the door kicked the Witch, and the Witch kicked the bucket. After trying to kill Francis, who then killed my tent."

"Still think traveling with the Survivors is a good idea?" Leon asked. "It hasn't even been half a week yet."

"You're just not used to working on a team. Isn't that how the secret agents do it? All by themselves, talking cars, tying themselves up to bungie cords and jumping out of buildings..."

"You watch to many movies." Leon pushed himself from the wall he had taken to leaning on, keeping the weight off his injured leg.

"You should probably bandage that up. Even if the journal is right, and you do have a crazy healing factor, you still need to keep appearances up for the others. Can't have them noticing that you heal in half the time without needing to use any medicine or whatever."

"I'll do that at the next safe-house." Leon sighed, running a hand through his hair and brushing his bangs out of his eyes. "Preferably one that isn't flammable."

"Safe-house made out of Jell-O and sunshine. Check." Paul said in all seriousness, and walked off to inform the other Survivors that they were going to make a dash for the next safe-house before taking a break, leaving Leon on his own to try and think of a retort to Paul's words.

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

**_:::10 Minutes Later:::_**

There was just something about creeping down the dark road, taking point, the sniper raised to his cheek as his eyes scanned for Infected, ready to look through the scope at the sign of movement, that made Leon happy. Well, not happy, but content. As if something along these lines was _common_ for him._ 'Oh God I hope not.'_ Leon thought with a small frown. What kind of job included shooting people? ...okay, a lot of jobs, now that Leon thought about it, contained shooting others potentially shooting people, but none that he knew of included hunting down mutated humans._ 'Everything I'm remembering has to be coming from sci-fi movies.'_ Leon thought with conviction, pushing the images of different apocalyptic-like scenarios out of his head.

His contentedness was ruined quite quickly once a Hunter tackled Bill into a car that, go figure, had an alarm that had managed to last the six weeks since the end of the world. Paul ran forward, tackling the Hunter off of Bill's chest, rolling away from the Infected before it could lash out at him. Francis planted the muzzle of the gun against the Hunter's temple, and pulled the trigger, jerking backwards both from the recoil and to avoid the splattering gore. Silence reigned afterwards, the shot echoing down the streets and out of earshot.

"What, no horde?" Louis asked, surprised. A round of screams answered the faded gunshot, sounding inhuman and like a massive, many-headed beast.

"You had to ask." Zoey commented dryly, falling in back-to-back with the black man. Francis scrambled back to the group, trying to hide the rush he was in, to avoid being tackled by the incoming horde. Paul slapped at his right thigh, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

"What are you doing?" Leon demanded, falling in line with his companion, turning around to face the opposite direction as him. Paul, still bouncing, turned around to face the same direction as the blonde Infected, taking the subtle hint that the Infected were coming from the direction Leon was facing.

"Gettin' pumped!" Paul barked, beginning to run in place.

"You're going to tire yourself out before the horde even gets here."

"Will not!" And right as Paul said that, he stopped, bending over with his hands on his knees, panting. Leon just stared, eliciting a "Shut up..." from the older man. And with that, the horde surged around the corner.

Francis leapt into it head on, swinging his shotgun like a bat, caving in skulls left and right. Paul hung back, squeezing off round after round among the other Survivors, while Leon dashed after Francis, jumping into the air at normal height and spin-kicking Commons in the temples to avoid accidentally shooting a Survivor through an Infected. "Are you nuts?!"

"Maybe!" Francis called back, right before he was dive-tackled by three Infected, girly screams coming from inside the mass of bodies. Leon rolled his eyes, shoving his way through the Infected that sprinted past him to get to the other Survivors behind him. He was just pulling the Infected off of Francis, delivering a bullet to the backs of their necks, when a shiver went down his spine, standing straight and ridged, his eyes going wide.

_Strong strong death kill pain Infected dead dying dying run hide run run RUN!_

Leon spun around on his heels, a feral panic gripping his heart. "Paul!" He roared. Paul looked up from the rogue Hunter that he had pinned, the head caved in from where he had pistol-whipped it enough times, his eyes slightly widened in surprise and confusion.

And then the fist the width of a tree trunk came out of nowhere and smashed into his back.

"PAUL!" Leon screamed, worry and rage filling his tone. Almost all action stopped, the Survivors staring in shock and horror at the crumpled form of Paul, pinned under the weight of the beast, and the Commons and the few Specials staring at it.

_The King is here._

Leon didn't even notice that his Predator instincts had said its first complete sentence. All he could see was red.

_'He's not moving. He should be moving.'_ Leon thought, finding it harder and harder to form complete thoughts. Paul wasn't moving, wasn't breathing. "Go." Leon growled to the Survivors, his voice coming out more guttural than he would have liked.

"But Paul-" Louis began.

"Go!" Leon snapped, more forcefully this time, his irises beginning to glow as they slowly shifted to a bright green, turning into the yellow eyes of the Predator. "I'll deal with Paul. Get to the safe-house." The Survivors stayed put, hovering just on the fringes of the mass of Infected. "NOW!" With that scream, the Survivors turned on their heels and raced away. And just like that, the frozen Infected came to life again, surging after them, wailing at the tops of their lungs. A few more hung back, debating between running after the Survivors, or braving the King to get to the human pinned underneath his fist. Leon's head whipped to face them, his eyebrows slamming down over his eyes, his teeth bared while his canines lengthened into long fangs, his incisors following to a slightly shorter length. _"Leave. Now."_ Leon snapped, his voice coming out as a pure growl, sounding much like a deeper and more feral version of the Hunter's crawl-growl. In his rage, Leon didn't notice that he was speaking in what would later become known as "Infected-Tongue."

The Commons jumped, surprised that a "human" knew their language. With another snarl from Leon that contained much profanity, the Commons whipped around and raced off to join their brethren that were tied up with the Survivors, wanting to get as far as possible from the human-that-was-not.

Leon focused back in on the King, and the friend that was smashed under him as the King snuffled his rage. _"Let him go."_ Leon demanded. The King, missing his lower jaw, just growled, lifting his fist up to smash it into Paul again before coming after Leon.

Leon never gave him the chance.

The Predator launched forward, screaming his anger, his pounce-screech ripping from his throat, the sound mixing into something else. Something more demonic. Something more predatory.

Leon smashed into the body of the King right as the behemoth began to bring his fists down, his claws - claws? - slicing into to swollen flesh of the monster, his boot-clad feet scrabbling for purchase. Giving up on the prospect of keeping his boots on, Leon slipped his feet from them, his toes - and the claw-like talons that now extended from them - curling into the flesh while the King roared, his arms to massive to bend properly for his thick fingers to snap Leon's neck.

The blonde Infected flipped over the King's shoulder, dragging his claws through the skin and muscle as he did so. As soon as he felt the King's back agains his legs, he bent his knees, letting go and dropping to the ground. He ducked as the King swung his arms around, and before the monstrosity could turn to attack, the Predator lashed out with his right arm, slashing through the muscles and tendons there. The Infected bellowed in rage, almost dropping down onto its knees, where Leon knew that it'd have trouble getting back up again.

But the King _didn't_ go down, and instead Leon's left side was introduced to the fist of the beast, feeling his ribs snap eagerly under the pressure, and his spine bend at an unnatural angle before flinging itself back into place, the line of bones and nerves creaking and groaning at the stress.

Leon flipped down the street from the blow, in something that looked almost like a cartwheel, gravel digging into his flesh as entire layers were peeled off by the rough asphalt. His flight was stopped by a building of a wall, which he promptly busted through, the bricks caving under his weight.

Leon lay in his pile of rubble, slight pain radiating from his ribcage, spine, and side. But he ignored it, primal fury still clouding his mind as he pushed himself to his feet, blood dripping from where his head had been cracked open, and from the corner of his mouth. The King was galloping at him, running like a gorilla, its fists cracking the ground as it went. Leon's vision began to turn black at the edges, like tunnel vision, before his vision in the black areas began to turn so that everything looked orange, the blackness that was spreading the orange slowly making its way towards the center of his eyes.

_Not good not good bad bad insane crazy berserk crazy bad insane death loss loss death insane..._ His Predator instincts were whispering, warning him, but Leon pushed it off, not caring. He knew what the thing in front of him was. And he knew that he was going to kill it. Because Paul...

Leon looked back over to his friend's prone form, still just laying on the street in that small crater, blood running from the corner of his own mouth.

The man's anger was renewed, and he dashed at the King himself, jumping ten feet above the King's head to get behind it. Leon grabbed the thing closest to him, which just so happened to be a light pole, and tore it right out of the cement as if it was a candle in a birthday cake. Leon wrapped his hands around the pole of metal, brought his arms back, and swung.

The pole that was crackling from electricity slapped right into the King's chest, and kept going, carrying the monstrosity with it. Leon released the pole, letting the pole and the King collapse to the ground. Before the insane Infected could regain his footing, Leon crouched, and grabbed the underside of the Toyota next to him. With hardly a grunt, Leon lifted the massive pickup truck right over his head, leapt, and redirected his weight, speeding up his fall to the ground by a good twenty miles per hour. The front end of the truck smashed into the King's body seconds before Leon's feet hit the asphalt, and Leon hardly wasted a second before raising the car with the crumpled front end into the air again, bringing it back down. And then he did it again, and again, and again, until the King was nothing but a bloody mess on the street, and most of the front end of the pickup turned into metal shards.

Leon dropped the rest of the car, panting, his fingers curling and uncurling as his eyes darted back and forth, looking for his next target. He had just killed a King - a _King_! - with his bare hands, and he wanted more. _Needed_ more. The blood on his fingers, under his claws and talons, and on his face felt good. Felt _right_. His tongue darted out of his mouth, swiping at the mixture of the King's blood and his own that was dripping down his face. It tasted good. He wanted more, but not just Infected blood. Pure blood, good blood. Uninfected blood. Human blood.

"L...Leon..." And just like that it was gone, the orange that had nearly enclosed all of his vision retreating, his blood lust and anger and hate and insanity vanishing, worry and fear and horror replacing them as he spun around to see Paul with his eyes partially opened, pain and worry clouding them. And as soon as Leon's golden eyes met Paul's, the pain from every one of his own injuries slammed into him, and he dropped, hitting the ground hard, his ankle - broken - rolling out from under him. "Leon...!" Paul called breathlessly, a little louder this time when he watched his traveling companion collapse.

Leon hurt, pretty much from everywhere. His right arm burned, and it felt like someone was trying to rip his ribcage and spine clear out of his torso. His left ankle was broken, and he had a head injury, right behind his hairline, with his bangs on the right side of his face matted with blood. His fingertips ached, and his mouth felt like something had ripped out of his gums- oh, right, he had spontaneously sprouted fangs, the four on top and the four on bottom refusing to go away. Various scrapes, bruises, and cuts littered his exposed arms and his feet - his jacket had been torn away at some point of the fight, and he had no idea where it had gone - and a shard of glass that had been shattered when he was thrown through the wall had sliced a sizable gash into his chest that wasn't deep enough to cause for to much concern but felt a mile deep.

His eyes were tired, and clouded, and pain oozed from every pore. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep for days. A scent entered his nose right as his mind was shutting down, a scent of blood. Paul's blood. For a split second, Leon's vision flashed orange, and his bloodlust began to creep back to the forefront of his mind, but it vanished at Paul's grunt of pain as he tried to move, thinking Leon had fallen unconscious.

Leon groaned, bile rising in his throat as he slowly forced himself back to his feet, putting most of his weight on his right leg. He limped over to Paul, and dropped to his knees nearby the man, flopping onto his chest, his half-lidded eyes slowly finding Paul's. "Are you okay?" Leon asked, hating how his voice grated in his throat, his throat being raw from the screeching. Paul's eyebrow twitched upwards. "Standard question."

"Are _you_ okay?" Paul questioned, his own voice soft and weak. "I mean...what was _that_?" So Paul had been conscious the entire time, or at the very least, been conscious for part of the time.

"I...I don't know." Leon groaned as a sudden convulsion of agony raced up and down his spine. He dropped his forehead onto the cement, closing his eyes, his migraine that had been quickly forming pressing against his temples. "Infected Journal?"

"Infected Journal." Paul agreed. Leon remained silent, both mulling over his thoughts and ignoring them. He had been going crazy, had been thinking and acting like an Infected. _A normal_ Infected.

_'What would have happened if I had kept going?'_ Leon didn't really want to think about it.

"Leon, we can't stay here." Paul swallowed loudly, catching his breath- even talking took his breath away. "Commons-" He grunted as he twisted towards Leon a bit more. "-and Specials will be coming. We need the others...where'd they go?"

"Safe-house." Leon pushed himself back onto his knees, pausing for breath, before grabbing Paul's upper arm. He froze, Paul hissing in pain when his arm jostled his chest. "What hurts?" Leon asked, before mentally palming his forehead. He knew next to nothing on medical attention, especially since he had no idea what was wrong with Paul in the first place.

"Uh, my back." Paul made a funny face, squinting. "And my legs...shit, I hurt pretty much everywhere."

_'I know the feeling.'_ Leon thought as he slipped underneath Paul, pulling the man onto his back, ignoring the way his spine creaked in discomfort at the added weight. No super-jumps for him, then- if his spine couldn't even handle carrying Paul, than it really wouldn't enjoy being compressed and shocked from multiple steroid-jumps. "Don't die on me, Paul." Leon said breathlessly after a few minutes of slow the slow trek down the empty street. Paul snorted from behind him.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to." He paused to cough, turning his head so that the bit of blood he coughed up didn't splatter all over the back of Leon's neck. "I have a brother I need to find, and my family." Darkness was creeping in on Leon's vision, and his mind was fuzzy. His body wanted to shut down, to go into a sort of hibernation state so that his already quick healing could jump-start and take over to fix him up faster. But if he fell unconscious now, then he and Paul would be sitting ducks for whatever wanted to attack them.

"You have a brother?" Leon asked, thankful for the distraction.

"Yeah..." Paul said quietly. "He doesn't remember me, though."

"Explain." He was pretty much desperate for conversation, anything that could hold his attention, anything that could keep him awake.

"Well, to put it simply, he and his friends don't make very good decisions." Paul chuckled. "After a fiasco involving three pounds of raw chicken, he hasn't been able to recognize me for a while. So we just don't see each other much. I used to work down south with him, but after he forgot me, I moved up here with my family for a bit of peace and quiet. Piss poor job the moving did, huh?" Leon gave a breathy laugh. He rounded a corner, nearly falling over when his ankle began to roll from underneath him again. Damn, he had to get that set... "Leon, are you okay?"

"Fine." Leon instantly responded, not even missing a beat.

"That's a lie, and we both know it. And I wasn't only talking about your physical condition. I saw what you did back there. Well, most of it. Woke up just about the part where you picked up the car and ran over the Tank freestyle."

"I'm fine." Leon answered again, his jaw clenching. He _really_ didn't want to think about it.

"I don't think you are." Paul insisted. "Leon, that wasn't you, and you should really-"

"Paul, I'm fine!" Leon snapped, more forceful now. "I'm fine." He said again, quieter this time, as if to reassure himself more than reassure his friend. "Please, just leave it." There was silence, Paul just staring off into space, and Leon focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, and also focusing on limping without falling into something.

"Alright." Paul finally whispered. "For now." It wasn't perfect, but Leon would take it. He felt like he was going to be sleeping for a _looooong_ time, anyway. "Um...I know I said I'd leave it along, but there's something really important I should tell you."

"What?" The blonde Predator grumbled.

"Look at your hand." Leon sighed with a huff, shuffling slowly to a wall where he set Paul slowly down, collapsing down next to him himself, and pausing for breath. He felt fingers brush his right hand, and he jerked it away upon instinct, his blue-green eyes snapping open to glare at Paul who had a mix of a grin and a confused and worried stare on his visage. Leon followed his line of sight, and blanched.

His entire right hand, and most of his forearm, had faded from the normal skin tone that the rest of his skin held, into a deep gray, almost black, the ends of his fingers being the darkest, and the rest of his skin fading to the dark gray, before it suddenly cut off in jagged patches at about halfway up his forearm. His flesh had clumped together and hardened into almost place-like formation of rough hide, looking like his arm was made out of some type of rough stone or earth-based material. His fingers were slightly curved, now, and it took a bit of effort to get them to go straight, and stay like that. But what was the worst, was the spikes of bone that had ripped out of the ends of his fingers, his nails on that hand having grown to extend over the tops of them, stopping right in line with the sharpened points of bones, which were an off-white color, his nails a slightly darker off-white than that.

Leon couldn't stop staring at the mutation, his jaw working up and down in silent shock. He suddenly lifted his left arm up, dread rising in his throat. He sighed in relief- his left arm didn't share the same look, and neither did his feet. His claws were still there on both his left hand and his feet, but they had shrunk to a much more manageable size. His fangs hadn't shrunk by much, and he still had four on the top and bottom. "W-what...?" Leon stuttered, before swallowing thickly. _'What's happening to me...?'_

* * *

><p><strong>Aaaaaaaannnnnd FINISHED! HA! The first chapter of the month. ...I don't even know if this is the fanfic I'm supposed to be working on. |D Meh, I did this chapter, I'll find out later. It is currently...11:38 p.m. on September 29th. Awwe...only about twenty minutes left until the anniversary of the character Leon S. Kennedy being made has passed. The day went so quickly...oh well, it'll come again NEXT YEAR! 8D<strong>

**...I need a life.**

**Nah, I've got Gamer's Guild.**

_~ Kitsune-242_

**P.S. - Oh, hey! I have a tumblr made for Leon, the Predator Leon.** If any of you are interested, go check it out! It'll basically kind of like a journal for Leon, where he keeps track of what's going on. Go ahead and check it out, I'm going to be making one for Paul later, and there's a future character from WiSC who already has a page on there. If you want to know who it is, go check it out. ;D


	5. Uncloaked

Disclaimer: Hooo boy! Another chapter! Yay! Hopefully I'm cranking these chapters out because I suddenly have a load of inspiration for this story. *Excited*

**EDIT:** Aaaaaand inspiration gone. XD BUT! I'm going to be trying to finish up the NO MERCY campaign in this chapter. I have the perfect way to end it, and I'm already at the part where they're almost at the hospital. Though, I might split this up into two chapters, since I already have it at 12 pages for this chapter. Wait, that's to short...never mind. XD

**EDIT 2:** 21 pages, and I still have the entire fight scene to do. Greeaaaaaat. XD

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

**Uncloaked**

**_:::Streets of Mercy City:::_**

Paul was in a very bad way, and Leon knew that. He wasn't faring to well, either, but his Infected blood was keeping him alive, keeping him away from the brink of death. Paul, on the other hand, needed some serious attention ASAP. He had no time to spare, and here was Leon, dragging his feet.

Really, it wasn't Leon's fault he was going so slow. His ankle was broken, and refused to work correctly, and Leon's spine felt like it was twisted 720 degrees, and Paul resting on it wasn't helping much. The gash in Leon's chest was burning like crazy, and the wound on his skull was giving him a migraine. But his mind wasn't only any of this pain, nor was it completely focused on Paul. It was occupied with what he hid under the bandages wrapped around his right hand and forearm.

He had mutated. That was the simplest way to put it. His arm was beginning to mutate into the arm of some monster, with the bones jutting out of his fingertips to form jagged claws. After a bit of panicking on Leon's part, the younger man had found some rolled up bandages in one of the cases on his belt, and had wrapped them around his arm and hand, taking extra care to cover each part of his fingers before slipping his fingerless glove back on. He planned on finding some skin-colored bandages later, so that one wouldn't notice that his arm was wrapped with a passing glance, but at the moment, he was occupied with both A) quietly freaking out that he might be slowly mutating into something even worse than a Tank, and B) the fact that Paul was drifting in and out of consciousness.

Finally Leon rounded the last corner between him and where the scent of Survivors was the strongest. There. There was the red metal door that marked a safe-house. It was shut tight, but Leon could pick out the glow of light from under the door and through the small, palm-sized window that was set in the door at about eye-level.

Leon stopped just in front of the door, debating his options. How was he supposed to get the Survivors' attention? He knew that they barricaded the door, so simply opening it was out.

Finding no other choice, Leon grit his teeth - and his newly-grown fangs - and leaned forward, ramming his head into the door repeatedly.

Maybe ramming into the door like a drunken idiot - or, more expectedly, an Infected - wasn't such a good idea.

The door, apparently hadn't been barricaded as much as usual, because after only a few seconds, the door was thrown open tossing Paul and Leon to the ground with it. Something tackled him, a knee pressing into his stomach as a shotgun was pressed up against his throat, choking him.

"...Leon?" Francis asked from above him, the snarl that had been on his face being wiped off as soon as he recognized who he had tackled. "Shit, I though you were a vampire!"

"He's not, now get off of him!" Paul demanded from where he was sprawled on the cement, his eyes glaring weakly. Francis surged to his feet, leaping away form Leon as the blonde man took a weak swipe at the man with his left hand in retaliation. He tried to sit up, but his exhausted muscles wouldn't listen, and he just flopped down and over, landing on his stomach, his cheek pressed into the asphalt.

A gasp game from the open door of the safe-house, and a short jog latter brought gentle hands to Leon's shoulder. "Leon, are you okay?" Zoey asked, just out of the blonde Infected's line of sight. Even so, he turned his eyes as far as they would go, staring dryly at her. "Right, sorry, standard question. Boys! Help me get these two inside. I don't think they can move on their own. Can you?" Paul confirmed her thought, but Leon snorted, his arms shakily forcing his body to rise unsteadily, Zoey and Louis standing nearby incase Leon decided he needed help.

"I'm fine." Leon said, watching as Bill and Francis checked Paul over on the streets, wanting to find out his condition before even attempting to move him. "How's Paul?"

"Bad," Said Louis. "_really_ bad. What happened after we left?"

"Fought the Tank." Leon deadpanned, motioning to himself, and forcing himself to not refer to the beast as "King," like how he just knew all the other Infected did, like how his Predator instincts did. "Won."

"Where's your guns?" Zoey questioned. Leon's mind flashed to an image of where he had deposited his guns right before Paul had been sucker-punched by the Tank. His boots weren't to far off.

"Shit." Leon breathed, running a shaky hand through his hair. "With my boots." He chuckled in response. His small smile was wiped clear off his face in the next instant. "He needs serious help, doesn't he?" All he received were nods. Before Leon, or anyone for that matter, could speak, a loud whirring noise alerted them to the approach of a vehicle.

A helicopter lowered itself out of the dark night air, hovering a few inches off the ground before touching down. It was the News 'copter again, the same one who had told the Survivors that there was an evac point at Mercy Hospital. The pilot jumped out of the cockpit, holding his hat to his head as the blades of the helicopter died down, the blades swinging in a lazy circle as he half jogged over to the Survivors. "More Survivors, I can't believe it." The man laughed. "I thought I'd found them all." He said, gesturing wildly to his 'copter, which was filled to the brim with wide-eyed humans that stared at the Survivors suspiciously. "Look, I have room for one more. Any of you interested?" He asked with a grin. "I can take one now, and once I'm done with this load, I can come pick you up from Mercy Hospital."

Bill stood up, about to answer that their group should stick together, when Leon stepped forward himself, looking the pilot square in the eye. "The place you're taking them. Does it have medical personnel?" Leon demanded.

"Of course. The best that this part of the state will see, probably. The only this part of the state will see, but that's just a detail." Leon looked the man up and down, searching for any sign of deceit, memorizing his scent. If he needed to track the man, then he'd be able to. Nodding his head to himself, Leon stepped out of the way to reveal an semi-conscious Paul to the pilot. "My friend needs some serious help. Fast." The pilot looked Paul over, before looking to Leon.

"No offense, friend, but so do you."

"I'm fine." The response was feeling immediate now, no longer really needing thought. Well, that was fast. "Paul's the one who needs the most help. Can you get him to there?"

"Faster than you can say The Flash." The pilot said. Minutes later, Paul was on a board of plywood, Leon crouching next to the man as the others stood away, giving the two friends privacy. For all they knew, this was the last time they'd see each other.

"You can't make me go, Leon." Paul said, sounding like a little kid on the subject of going to the dentist. "I don't have to go if I don't want to."

"Yeah, but you need to." Was Leon's response, the man smiling slightly. "I'll get along fine without you for the next few days. Just don't eat all the cake at the Survivor camp without me, aye?" Paul gave a small smile.

"I can't just leave you with the four Big Bad Survivors. What if they decide to turn you into a target practice mat?"

"Hey!" Leon cried, indignant. "I think I can defend myself from them. And you said that they wouldn't freak out like that!"

"Yeah, if we had had the chance to ease them into the idea. You're not very good at "easing into an idea."" Paul mocked.

"Shut up. I'll be fine, _mom_." Leon paused, looking to the pilot who was tapping his wrist. They had to get in the air. "Listen, Paul. I'll be fine. You'll be flown to the nearest Survivor camp, where there'll be people to care for you. It's about a two day trip there, and I estimate we still have a few days of walking before we get to Mercy Hospital. So I'll see by the end of the week." Leon fell silent, staring at Paul as the older man closed his eyes in resignation.

Paul's eyes opened again when he felt something lightly tap into his arm.

It was Leon's fist, extended with his bandaged fingers closed around something. Paul slowly lifted an arm, and when his open palm was directly under his fist, Leon released the object, letting the blood-coated dog-tags plop into Paul's hands.

"There. A good luck charm." Leon said. "They've served me well."

"Have not."

"Hey, I'm not dead, am I? ...okay, fine, don't give me that look. I'm not _dead_ dead. As in "in the ground" dead. That's good enough luck these days."

"Leon, these are important to you. I can't just take them."

"Of course you can." Leon blinked slowly, a wry grin stretching across his face to reveal his eight, sharp fangs. "Besides, I'll be coming to see you in a few days to get them back. So don't lose them between now and then, okay?" Paul put them around his neck, slipping the metal tags underneath his shirt.

"Whatever you say." Paul chuckled as Francis, Bill, Louis, and the pilot came over and lifted the board into the helicopter. Zoey hung back with Leon by the door to the safe-house, the dark-haired woman holding his pistol at the ready in case any Infected decided to show up.

The helicopter blades began to spin slowly, before picking up pace, until they blurred together into one disk. The long, large capsule of metal raised into the air, rotated once as if in farewell, and then took off into the dark night. Leon stood still until even his hearing couldn't pick up the chop of the blades, and his nose couldn't pick up the scent of metal and fuel.

"Are you okay?" Zoey asked softly, her hand hovering by Leon's shoulder. She wanted to put a hand reassuringly on the man's shoulder, but knowing that he didn't exactly like anybody, didn't know if it would be accepted or not.

"No." Leon answered blandly. "The first person I've known just got carted away in a flying metal deathtrap." And who knew if the doctors would be able to safe Paul?

"You'll see him again. You gave him your dog-tags, right?" Leon nodded. "Then you'll see him again. That little trick works both ways. Just as how you'll find Paul to get your tags back, he'll find you to return them." Leon offered Zoey a small, almost minuscule, grateful smile at her words, the first true smile he had really ever given the Survivors.

The smile was suddenly gone as Leon's vision blurred. "Zoey." He said, Louis walking up as he noticed Leon beginning to sway on his feet. "I think I might be about to-." And Leon hit the ground with a heavy thud, his eyes closed, his mind having shut down before his knees even hit the ground for some much-needed rest.

**_:::With the Survivors:::_**

Zoey wasn't exactly the best at medical attention, but the Infection had forced her to be able to treat many different kinds of wounds with minimal use of bandages. Even so, she had to call on the rest of her friends on the best course of action to take when treating some of the injuries. Bill was a veteran, after all, and Francis had gotten into his share of bar fights. Louis also knew a surprising amount for a business man, but living through the Infection probably attested to that.

Francis knew how to treat the broken ribs, or at least, knew how he treated them. It wasn't fun to watch, but Francis had to force the bones back into an acceptable place. It wasn't fun trying to hold the man down, either. Leon looked strong already, but his looks belittled his true strength. It took all four of the Survivors to keep him pinned, Francis sitting on the man's stomach as he forced his fingers under the displaced ribs, with Bill pinning Leon's shoulders, and Zoey and Louis both holding an arm so that Leon didn't lash out and hit Francis. They bound his chest tightly in bandages after that, taking extra care to bandage the large laceration in his chest.

His head wound, though cause for concern, was one of the easiest injuries to bandage, along with the scrapes and cuts that littered Leon's arms. They wrapped his feet as well, considering they were covered in their own fair share of scrapes. Louis even ended up having to pull what looked like a small piece of glass out of Leon's right foot, but it turned out to be a shard three inches long. Leon, apparently, hadn't noticed. The ankle of that foot was pretty much shattered, and all they had to act as a splint were a few empty clips from one of Leon's bags on his belts that were duct-tapped together and then wrapped around the ankle. Whatever was wrong with Leon's right arm, they didn't know, but he had already wrapped it, so they didn't see the need to unwrap it. In case it was broken, though, they found a broken broomstick and duct-taped it to his arm and forearm, keeping the wrist and hand in place.

The injury that was most problematic was the one that none of them recognized. Whenever Leon was twisted to much, his grimace would become more intense, and he hadn't taken kindly to when Francis had had to sit on him. It was Bill who deduced that there was something wrong with the blonde man's spine. Zoey had been worried that he'd broken his spine - an injury that could potentially paralyze Leon, making it near impossible to survive, even with added help - but Bill pushed that idea away. Leon had been moving fine enough when he had been awake, so the chances of him having broken his spine were slim to none. Something _was_ wrong with his spine, though, and since none of them knew what to do with it, they just bound his torso even tighter, from right under his chin to his waist.

After they were don't wrapping his wounds, they carefully moved him onto a few folded up blankets, using two as a pillow, and covered him from his ankles to his waist with a thin blanket. They stepped back and appraised their work shortly, before taking a seat around a small, controlled campfire they had made on the cement ground. They reclined in silence, staring at the small flames that danced under a homemade grill built from metal grating they had, a stack of hamburgers they had scrounged up cooking slowly in the heat.

"Think Paul will be okay?" Zoey asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Who knows?" Francis responded, his tone apathetic.

"Francis!" The only female snapped, her eyes darting over to Leon to see if the man had woken up and heard Francis.

"What? We hardly knew the guy!"

"That "guy" and his friend have saved your lives more times than you know how to count." Bill growled harshly in reply. "And they were almost killed by a Tank while we ran for our lives. What we did was horseshit, we should have stayed to help." Then maybe Paul's life wouldn't be in jeopardy, and Leon wouldn't be in critical condition with no emergency personnel to lend aid.

"We shouldn't have left." Zoey agreed with a short nod. "We left a single man to take on a Tank, and look what happened." She waved her hand at Leon, jumping slightly when the door to the safe-house opened, Louis entering with a few guns in his hands, Leon's backpack, and the blonde man's boots slung over his shoulder.

"You should see the other guy." Louis said, kicking the safe-house door closed with his foot, placing Leon's things near the unconscious man. "It took me a few minutes to identify the thing. I had to look under a smashed-apart pickup truck just to find it. The Tank is a bloody, pulpy mess! The truck that was used to beat the life out of the thing isn't any better."

"Leon used a truck? How'd he get it started?" Zoey questioned. If they could get a car started, getting to the hospital would be so much easier. Faster, too.

"That's the thing." Louis replied with a shake of his head. "The truck had no wheels. He couldn't have been driving it." While the others conversed about how Leon might have used to the truck to kill the Tank, Bill looked over to the typically-calm man, his eyes narrowing a hair's breadth. Was it just him, or did the fingers on his right hand look a bit longer? And sharper? Bill thought back to when he had been wrapping the cut on Leon's chest, and could have sworn he had seen the wound slowly knitting itself closed, but had written it off as a trick of the light. But now...

There was something strange going on, and Bill intended to find out what.

**_:::Mindscape:::_**

"Hello?" Leon called, his eye twitching as he surged through the thick fog. He was both irritated, and relieved. Confusion was mixed in there somewhere, but irritation and relief were the two dominant feelings.

His injuries were practically gone. The only thing that remained was the twinge of pain in his chest from his shattered ribs, and even that only bothered him if he moved to quickly, or twisted to much. His energy was completely refilled, none of the fatigue from earlier remaining. But he couldn't enjoy his triumph over his injuries, on account of the fact that he had no idea where he was. Everything surrounding him was shrouded by thick mist, so much so he wasn't even sure there was anything around him.

_'I swear, if Francis dumped me out here to mess with me...'_

_"He didn't."_ A growling voice sliced through the mist like a knife, wrapping around Leon, sending a shiver down his spine. _"I did."_ The mist before Leon parted, revealing a man that looked like nearly the spitting image of the Infected man himself, with a few differences. This Leon was wearing a light gray hooded sweatshirt, his hair that was a much lighter shade of blonde, almost white, and it was pulled back in a short ponytail. Like Leon, this man had long fangs, four on top and four on the bottom, but _unlike_ Leon, his fangs were longer, the top ones poking out from his lips slightly. This man was wearing no shoes, And his feet were by no means normal. His flesh didn't even look like flesh, looking more like how Leon's right arm looked under the bandages, his "flesh" a deep, dark gray, with sharp bones protruding from the ends of his toes, the bones curving into inch-and-a-half-long talons, his nails extended over the tops of the bones. How far this continued was unknown, for it continued past his pant legs. His arms were in no better condition. And lastly, this man's eyes were a bright shade of liquid gold.

"Who are you?" Leon demanded, glaring, his eyes narrowed. This...person...looked almost exactly like him. There was no way that was a coincidence. The lighter-colored Leon gave a small smile.

_"Would you mind speaking Infected Tongue?"_ The light-Leon asked, his voice sounding like quiet growling if Leon focused enough. _"I know a bit of human language, but I find it hard to listen to for long."_ Leon's eyes narrowed.

"I can't speak Infected Tongue, whatever that is." The grin of light-Leon - damn it looked weird to see himself grin - grew wider.

_"Then how do you understand me?"_ Leon sputtered, at a loss for words. _"Exactly. Just try, it's an ability you have now, and a damn well useful one. You'd be surprised how many Commons will listen to you simply because you sound like them. The instinct is there, you just need to find it."_

Leon honestly had no idea why he was listening to this obviously craze-induced hallucination talk him into doing anything, but he relented, staring off into nothing as he focused.

_"Who are you?"_ Leon asked again, almost jumping as his words came out as a literal growl, not just a simple tone in his voice.

_"Ah, there you go."_ The light-Leon said, clapping his disfigured hands shortly in congratulation. _"Now was that so hard?"_

_"Who. Are. You?"_ Leon asked again, not even bothering to answer the light-Leon. His counterpart frowned.

_"Did you really think your instincts just talked on their own?"_ The light-Leon asked, before spreading his arms in a grand manor. _"Well, congratulations, your insanity and Infection level has given your instincts their own body. For the time being, anyway."_

"So...you're saying you're my instincts?" Leon asked dryly, sounding incredulous, accidentally slipping back into English. For a moment, light-Leon looked puzzled, before he seemed to have translated what Leon had said into Infected Tongue.

_"In a manner of speaking. Your Good Side, your Predator Instincts, your Conscience, your Infected Blood, your Sanity, there could technically be a lot that I could be. I'm not to sure myself. I only know as much as you know on the matter, if not a little bit more. I do live in your head, after all, and I know just a bit more about the Infection than you."_

"Then talk." Leon demanded, shaking his head to remind himself about the language to use._ "Why am I suddenly talking to myself?"_

_"Thank God you asked me a question I actually have the knowledge to answer."_ Leon's instincts answered. _"When you thought the King had killed Paul, you were so filled with rage, that your Infection actually evolved. That's why I'm able to actually speak in complete sentences now, why you can now speak Infected Tongue, and why I have a personification. Think of it like the Infection evolving from producing Commons to producing Specials. It's like that, but on a more juiced-up level. It's why your arm mutated, too."_ The man nodded to Leon's right arm.

_"So that means this is as weird as it's going to get?"_ Leon questioned, hopeful. His instincts just shrugged, though.

_"I honestly have no idea. I'd like to give you a definitive answer, but as you evolve, so do I. I have no more information on how our particular Infection works than Paul does."_ His instincts paused. _"I do, however, have to tell you something, and you'd do well to listen. Leon, you can't let the Infection take over your mind like it did. This isn't a game. If you lose control to much, for to long, you could end up killing somebody that you'd rather not. You may act more human than any of the other Infected, but the fact remains that you are Infected, and you still have the lust to kill, just like the typical Infected. Your Infection allows you to be more human, but you're not."_

_"You think I don't know that?"_ Leon snapped. His instincts chuckled.

_"Oh, I know you know. I'm just reminding you."_ His instincts paused. _"There's...there's someone else here, Leon. I can feel it. I haven't met him, but I know he's there. If I'm you're Good Side-"_

_"-then there must be a Bad."_ Leon interrupted, and his instincts nodded.

_"If you lose control to many times, or for to long...I don't think anything will be able to bring you back to sanity. You'll be just like every other Infected that are shot at with indifference."_ Leon blinked away his worry, pushing the thought of his bloody, insanity-plagued corpse rotting, forgotten, in the streets away from the forefront of his mind.

"I understand..." Leon cleared his throat. _"What should I call you?"_ Leon asked, surprising his instincts. _"On the off chance we're ever speaking face-to-face again, I'd like to stop referring to you as my "instincts" in my head."_ His instincts laughed.

_"Instincts with a name. Now that's funny."_ Even so, his instincts twisted up his face in thought. _"Scott. I'll go with Scott."_ Leon raised his eyebrow in question. _"Well, it's either I take your middle name, or I take your name backwards, and I don't feel like being called Neol."_

_"Thanks for the warning."_ Leon said with a brisk nod to his- ...Scott. Scott grinned, the smile border-lining one of a madman, as if he could hear Leon referring to him by his new name.

_"No problem. And Leon?"_ Leon cocked his head to show he was listening. _"Listen to me more often, will you? Your Predatory instincts are here for a reason."_ With no time to answer, darkness slammed down on Leon's vision, catapulting him into true unconsciousness, leaving Scott to stand in the misty are in silence. The man sighed, turning on his heels. His job was hard, when the man that you were the instincts of refused to accept them.

He had a few hours before he'd be thrust back into playing the role of Leon's instincts when the man would wake up. Though, really, considering this was a mindscape, it was more like mere minutes. Oh well. Until then, he would rest.

**_:::With the Survivors:::_**

It was around three in the morning when the Survivors were startled out of their sleep by a loud crash, a thud, and a muffled grunt of pain. Zoey was the first to click on her flashlight, shining it around the safe-house room, the beam landing on a crumpled form on the ground, five feet from where he was supposed to be. "Leon!"

His eyes were scrunched in agony and his teeth were grit and bared, but once Zoey came into sight, he folded his lips over his teeth to shield the fangs that he knew weren't going to go away, at least not easily.

"You're awake!" Zoey breathed, shock carried in her words.

"Oh so that's why I suddenly feel like crap." Leon sarcastically quipped, pressing on hand against his chest, and the other right over where a the majority of his broken ribs were located.

"Well, what were you doing trying to stand up?" Bill grumbled, stifling a yawn behind his hand. He was only guessing the blonde man was walking, of course, since Leon dragging himself across the ground seemed both impractical and improbable.

"The water is over there." Was Leon's reply, jerking his head to where a few cases of water were staked, having been there since the beginning of the Infection- Survivors tended to leave things behind to help out whoever would pass through next, and a lot of the early Survivors had been well-equipped in more than just firearms.

Louis sprang to his feet, rushing over to pull a bottle of water from a case as Zoey helped Leon prop his back against the wall nearest to him. Leon took the bottle with a small, grateful nod, before practically tearing the top of the bottle apart and guzzling down its contents. He went through three more bottles before pausing to catch his breath, sipping the fifth bottle slowly, reveling in how good the cool liquid felt on his dry throat. "How long was I out?" Leon asked.

"Only three days." Leon almost did a spit-take at Bill's response, but manage to just swallow his water and act surprised. _'Three days? Three entire days? It's never taken me that long to heal!'_ And judging by how just standing up and had been a chore, and then walking had made him collapse instantly, he was nowhere near healed. But he knew that with the injuries he had sustained, a human would take much longer to even be at the point he was at. He had had to remember that he wasn't with Paul, who had grown used to his healing abilities, so acting surprised at the short span of time was a definite no-no.

"W-wow." Leon managed to stutter. He cleared his throat and took another sip of water, feigning that his stutter was to be blamed on the fact that he hadn't gotten much fluids in him for three days. "Three days. I've made good time."

"You have." There was something in the way Bill said that that made Leon fidget slightly. He quickly took count of the injuries that he could at least still feel.

_'Spine, ribs, head wound is almost healed, chest wound is a little behind the head wound, ankle is healing fine...'_ Leon mentally nodded, accepting the rate of his healing. He had only broken his arm once since he had woken up in Small-Practice, and it had taken a little over a week to heal completely. He hadn't had cuts at the time, so he just figured that they were healing slower than normal because his energy was focusing mainly on his bones. At least, he hoped that was the reason, and that it wasn't because his mutation from losing control had traded his healing factor for whatever was up with his arm.

Leon turned his head to where the Survivors had been sleeping, a twitch forming in his right eyebrow at seeing Francis still slumbering away by a pile of glowing embers. Unceremoniously, Leon picked up his sixth and unopened bottle of water and chucked it at the man's head, hitting dead-center. "Wake up and say hello." Leon called as the man sat up, shouting obscenities about being attacked by vampires. The group got a good laugh out of that.

Once everything had calmed down - and after Bill and Louis had to hold Francis back to prevent him from killing Leon - Leon moved slowly over to the fire, accepting a burger quietly. "So when are we moving out?" Now there really was a spit-take, courtesy of Louis.

"What?" The dark-skinned man sputtered. "You just woke up! From a critical state!"

"I feel fine." One slap in the back from Francis later - and after a yelp and nearly tearing the offending man apart - Leon was poking angrily at his burger, no longer feeling in the mood to eat. "We still need to go." Leon muttered, his hand darting out to catch Francis's incoming hand before it could smack into his spine again. "I didn't say anything that needed you to disprove it by hitting me." Leon growled. He released Francis's hand, allowing the man to reclaim it. "As I was saying, we need to get to Mercy Hospital. Our evacuation point is on the roof, and if we're not there when the helicopter pilot gets there, then we're trapped here. And the longer we wait, the more the Infected crowd the area."

"How do you know that?" Zoey asked, an eyebrow raising.

"Paul and I didn't have much to do up on the roof." Leon deadpanned. "We watched the Infected a lot, looking for-" _'Other Infected like me.'_ "-any Special Infected that could pose a threat. Noticed their patterns. They were all headed towards Mercy Hospital, probably because that's where the evacuation point was located." That was a lie. Paul and Leon _had_ been keeping an eye out for Infected that weren't totally nuts, but it had been Leon to notice the Infected were flocking to Mercy Hospital. It turned out that there was a type of "Hive Mind" that connected all of the Infected, so that the Infected could pass basic thoughts to one another, to coordinate attacks to a certain extent and whatnot. That was why it seemed that when one Infected would see a Survivor, seven more would run out of nowhere, alerted by the Hive Mind. Leon wasn't able to actually connect to the Hive Mind, but he could feel it, sense when the Infected around him were making a lot of noise. But by that time, it was usually to late, and the Infected had spotted him and had decided to attack.

"Even if that's true," Louis began slowly. "you still need your rest. You were in critical condition for a day and a half. You can't just ignore that, or your injuries."

_'I can.'_ Leon thought, biting back an annoyed growl. "Fine." He relented, his voice ill-tempered. "But I'll be leaving by lunch tomorrow, whether or not you're coming with me."

"You're so stubborn!" Zoey breathed, scowling at the flames.

"One of the things I'm best at." Was Leon's reply, the blonde Infected making his way to his feet. "There, you see? I can already walk." He took one step and wobbled, faltering a his knees almost gave out from the shock of pain that shot up and down his spine. Someone sarcastically cleared their throat behind him, but the blonde man didn't pay any attention, laying down and intentionally laying with his back to the Survivors as he closed his eyes, waiting for sleep. As he was waiting, he ran through his memories of his few hours of consciousness, and noticed something that was off.

"Francis! Why in the _hell_ are you wearing my boots?!"

:::Next Morning:::

The next morning found Leon waking up late, around ten or so. The other Survivors were already awake, chatting while cooking breakfast. Leon joined them, eating in silence as they all joked with one another. Without any warning, he surged to his feet, snatched his boots right off of Francis's feet, and pulled them on, all the while hopping unsteadily towards his backpack and guns, which Louis had apparently retrieved. Sadly, the man hadn't been able to find his coat. For some reason that felt familiar. And annoying. _Very_ annoying.

"Anybody coming?" Leon asked, and was met with blank stares. He nodded his head slightly. "Alright then." He muttered, turning towards the door. Before he could even open the red slab of metal, a hand wrapped itself up in the folds of his backpack, gently keeping him in place.

"Give us a few minutes, will you?" Zoey asked, her tone light and playful. Leon nodded his head briskly, standing back to allow her room to move.

Within minutes they were off, closing and resealing the door to the safe-house so that no Infected would wander in before other Survivors could claim the building as a resting point. Leon, who would have preferred to be trailing behind the group so that none of them would have a chance to shoot him in the back - yes, he was still paranoid that the Survivors would be able to tell he was Infected, just as Paul had - but Zoey and Louis insisted that he walk in front of at least one person, to both cover him in case he had to pause in his fighting, and to make sure he didn't either collapse or start to fall behind.

_'It's like they have no faith in my survival ability at all.'_ Leon grudgingly thought as he took up his place in front of Francis, with Bill on his right and Louis leading the pack. He understood the reasoning behind the actions, considering they had no idea that he would still be able to fight just fine so long as he didn't jump further than a normal human, but it still made him twitchy. Well, twitchier than normal.

The shadow of Mercy Hospital loomed before them in the haze of the early morning, standing just a few blocks away. A few blocks more, and then he'd be flown to an evac camp. Filled with trigger-happy Survivors. And the military. With doctors. And ways to tell if you're Infected...

"Shit..." Leon breathed, Bill raising his eyebrow at the quiet exclamation. Zoey, taking the swear the wrong way, turned to Leon with concerned eyes.

"Are you alright? Do you need to stop to rest?" She asked, her hands twitching towards the health pack strapped to her backpack. Leon just shook his head instead of trying to come up with a sarcastic retort.

"No, I'm fine. Just, uh, my ankle hurt a bit." He paused after his lie. "But it's better now." To emphasize his point, he bounced up and down a few times on the balls of his feet, making sure the heels of his boots smacked against the ground loudly. Giant "steroid-jumps," as Paul called them, might be out of the question, but something as simple as this didn't even show up as a blip on the radar.

Satisfied with Leon's display, Zoey focused her attention back on the street, right in time to lodge a bullet into the skull of a Boomer before it could get to close.

Leon discretely brought a hand up to his nose, acting as if his cheek itched as he covered it from the stench of the foul liquid. His control over his sense of smell was completely screwed up at the moment, something he blamed on his further mutation. He was blaming everything on his further mutation, actually.

_'I blame you.'_ Leon directed the thought to where he figured Scott might be hiding, but received no reply. Not like he expected one from his instincts, anyway. "How much longer until we reach the hospital?" Leon asked, every other word punctuated by short claps of sound from his handgun as he picked off a few of the Common Infected idly.

"Two streets over once we reach the next intersection." Louis absentmindedly replied. Leon frowned, his mind subconsciously reaching out to the Hive. And what he heard, he didn't like.

"Stop." Leon barked out before he could think his actions through. He was both pleased and annoyed that everybody stopped so readily.

"What?" Francis growled, apparently as annoyed as Leon contemplated feeling. Well, no use trying to hide it now.

"There's a whole bunch of Infected around that corner. Shoulder-to-shoulder."

"And how do you know that, kid?" That was Bill, coming up to stand in front of Leon.

"Um, I can...hear...them." Leon trailed off. Well, it wasn't a complete lie! He _could_ hear them! Just not in the sense that a human could hear them. _'Good going, Leon.'_

Francis snorted and trotted to the corner. He took one step around the corner, froze, and then backed up. He turned to Leon, glaring. "How'd you know that?" Leon gave a smug grin.

"Well, maybe if you'd stop talking to yourself about how awesome you were, and stopped stroking your own ego, you would have heard them." Okay, so Leon couldn't resist the jab at Francis. But honestly, who would?

"Ladies, ladies, no fighting, please." Zoey sighed, exasperated. Even so, she glanced at the corner of the street, expecting a horde to come tearing around the corner. "What're we supposed to do about the horde, though?" She asked, more to herself than to her comrades. She suddenly snapped her fingers. "Let's drive right through them! I've seen it done all the time in zombie video games and movies!"

"The idea is nice and all, Zoey," Bill began. "but we don't have a car."

"Dumbass over there started the truck that killed the Tank, right?" Francis asked, nodding his head in Leon's direction, who was fuming at the nickname. "Let's get _him_ to start the car."

"That was a heat-of-the-moment thing!" Leon protested. "And the key was in the sun visor!" A lie, but he also hadn't started the truck to run the Tank over.

"Consider this a heat-of-the-moment time again." Zoey said in a falsely cheerful, sing-song sort of way, pushing Leon towards the nearest minivan.

"A minivan? Really?" Leon asked, turning to face her, incredulous. She shrugged her shoulders, her smile still stretched across her face. Leon sighed, before bringing his elbow back, the driver's side window shattering upon contact. He turned around again, reaching his hand through the broken window, and unlocking the door, opening it quietly and sweeping the glass off of the seat and floor. He reclined onto his back under the steering wheel, staring at the uncovered wires underneath.

_'How in the hell do I do this?'_ Leon wondered, biting his lip as he wracked his brain for any thought, any stray memory that might tell him how to hot-wire a minivan. _'Scott? Any suggestions?'_ Silence. _'Of course not.'_ Leon sighed, reaching his hands into the wires, and pulling some at seemingly random, slicing some and putting others together. He really had no idea what he was doing, but in no time he had two wires in his hands, and was touching the ends together, sparks flying off each time.

And with a roar, the engine to the minivan burst to life.

Leon slid out of the car, staring at the front end of the van. "Huh." He deadpanned. There was that muscle-memory that Paul had mentioned before, when he had gone through his routine with the gun. Apparently, he had had hot-wiring a car engraved into his memory so deeply, that even his amnesia couldn't take it away completely.

"Sweet!" Francis cried, making a mad dash for the driver's seat. Leon stuck out his foot, the biker tripping and slamming face-first into the pavement.

"I started the car, I drive." Leon smugly stated, sliding into the driver's seat and closing the door, clicking his seatbelt in place. Francis grudgingly clambered into the back seat by himself, Louis and Zoey in the middle row, and Bill having gotten into the passenger seat before Leon had even gotten the van started.

The blonde Infected shifted the van into gear, and started forward at a slow speed, a sudden thought occurring to him. 'Oh, God, what if I can't remember how to drive?' Leon asked, before snorting, both out loud and in his head. _'Puh-lease, it's a freaking apocalypse. Rules of the road no longer apply.'_ He picked up speed, creeping to a halt at the corner. He swung the van around to face the lumbering horde, and the parking lot of the hospital a few streets away. He revved the engine, just because he could. "This is gonna be awesome." Leon said with a confident smirk, and slammed on the gas. And Scott said the first thing he had since Leon had met him face-to-face.

_We're all going to die._

The group tore down the street, Leon laughing like a maniac, Bill pressed far back into his seat so that when the airbag would be deployed it wouldn't give him a concussion, Louis and Francis screaming, and Zoey throwing out obscenity after obscenity while clutching the oh-SHIT handle. Infected fell left and right, crumpling under the tires of the minivan going one-hundred down the road. It was smooth sailing, even with all the noise in the cabin of the vehicle.

And then came the turn.

The tires screeched, losing all purchase on the ground as the van tipped on its side, and kept tipping, flipping over and over in a barrel roll, windows shattering and metal crumpling. The van finally came to a stop on its roof, teetering back and forth on the curved metal. All were breathing heavily from their screaming and/or laughing, their arms and legs dangling at awkward angles.

"What the hell was that?!" Francis demanded after a few seconds of silence that was only broken by heavy breathing. Leon punched at the release for his safety belt, falling on his head after it snapped out of place.

"I was driving." Leon dryly remarked, rubbing his head before holding out a hand for Bill, helping the old man flip out of his chair without falling flat on his face.

"Coulda fooled me, with that horseshit." Bill grumbled as he moved on to help the next Survivor. Leon chuckled, gesturing to the street that had almost been completely cleared of Infected thanks to his crazy swerve-driving.

"If you don't like the way I drive, then you shouldn't be walking the sidewalks." Joking aside, Leon felt like him flipping the car wasn't to surprising, just like the loss of his coat. _'We didn't die, Scott, see?'_ Leon jokingly thought to his instincts.

_Hm._ Was his only reply, Scott sounding disappointed. Or just annoyed. After all, he was Leon's instincts, and had told Leon something wrong. Unless...

_'Were you talking about us dying because of my driving?'_ Leon asked. _'Or because of something else?'_

_That, I will leave up to your imagination._ Scott replied with a quiet laugh, before withdrawing, becoming just a small lump in the middle of Leon's thoughts. The blonde man rolled his blue-green eyes. Weird-ass instincts that had their own intelligence...

"Hey, look! Another safe-house!" Louis cried, pointing as he raced off to the door that rested just inside the lobby for the hospital.

"So soon?" Zoey asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Probably expected Survivors to take longer." Leon said with a shrug.

"Or not make it this far at all." Bill commented dryly. "C'mon, kids, let's not keep the others waiting." He said, and trotted off to catch up to Louis, and Francis who had made a mad dash after him.

Zoey began to follow, but paused when Leon didn't follow. The blonde man was staring back the way they had come, to the bodies crushed on the pavement, and beyond, to where the buildings and the horizon line blended together at the vanishing point. "Hey." Zoey called softly, Leon's head slowly turning to her, his eyes taking longer to be dragged away from where he was looking. "You okay?"

"...yeah." Leon replied in equal softness, forcing himself to walk to the building. Ever since he had made it out of Small Practice, he hadn't stood in a building with so tight quarters. Where his jumping ability would be practically useless. Where, if somebody turned on him, he wouldn't be able to outrun them by sprinting flat out. _'Apparently I'm partially claustrophobic, now.'_ Leon thought with a mental, humorless chuckle.

He waited until Zoey was through the door of the safe-house, and paused for a moment, staring out the door at the cloudy sky.

_Storm coming._ Scott said, his words simple, almost sounding like when Leon had first heard his instincts.

_'A storm?'_ Leon thought, frowning. _'What type of storm?'_

Scott didn't answer.

**_:::Two Hours Later:::_**

The blonde Infected was getting restless, pacing back and forth in front of the exit door to the safe-room like a dog waiting for its human to return home. "What's taking him so long?" Leon groaned, looking to the bathroom that had the door shut tight, the noise of running water filtering through the heavy oak door.

"He's an old man." Francis said with mock sadness, shaking his head. "Maybe he slipped and broke his hip." He cried out when Louis thumped him on the back of the head.

"You're to impatient. We all took showers, Bill's the last one, just wait." Zoey said, all the while drying her hair with a clump of paper towels so that her wet hair wouldn't filter all the heat from her body into the air. "Even_ you_ took a shower." Leon glared at her half-heartedly through his wet bangs, having gotten out of the shower ten minutes ago himself.

"_I_ only took a three minute shower." Leon responded. "Who needs more than three minutes for a shower?!"

"Uh, normal people?" Louis supplied helpfully, receiving a scowl for his efforts. "You need to calm down, man. Getting so worked up and staying so stressed is bad for you."

_'I'll be better once I'm with a Survivor who won't shoot me in the head.'_ Leon thought snippily in reply, though not voicing his response out loud. Instead, the blonde man just leaned forward against the heavy metal door with a huff, pressing his face up against the bars of the window to peer out, his eyes scanning the shadows for Infected. Even they seemed to be conspiring against him and his boredom- there were none around for Leon to pick off with his handgun. Just empty shadows. Which, really, he should be _thankfu_l for, but Leon wasn't in a very thankful mood.

_Always crabby._

_'Shut up.'_ Leon mumbled, completely ignoring the fact that he was trying to get into a conversation with a mutated version of his instincts inside his head. Scott, however, didn't take the bait, and remained silent, thrusting Leon further into aggravated boredom. "Seriously, how long does it take to take a shower?"

"Quit your belly-achin', kid." Bill called as he waltzed out of the bathroom, dressed in a slightly cleaner version of what he had been wearing before. The man sure loved green. "We can leave as soon as I toss these old clothes." He said with a slightly queasy look, presenting a bundle of torn and dirtied clothing that had Boomer-bile stains covering half of it to the group. Leon, who had been slipping his backpack over his shoulders, snapped his head up faster than the blink of an eye at the mention of leaving. Before anybody could make a move, the clothes were out of Bill's hands, and flying out the small, shattered window by the entrance to the safe-house, smacking into the back of the head of a Common that had been standing idly, the Common tipping over at the imbalance and accidentally impaling itself on a rusted pipe that had been jutting out of the ground.

"There, can we go now? I'm sick of this city!" Leon declared, almost physically kicking the door right off its hinges before sweeping out of the room. The only reason he _didn't_ kick the door, was because he remembered quite clearly what had happened to Francis that last time somebody had tried to kick a safe-house door open.

The Survivors all looked to one another before shrugging, and trudged after the eager blonde, hardly getting any rounds off before Leon could take down the Infected with either an accurate bullet, or a well-placed kick.

Leon wanted to leave the city, but it wasn't just because of Paul. Mercy City was where Hell on Earth had started for him, with the Infected, discovering his own Infected status, and being attacked by some group named BLACKOUT. As far as he knew, BLACKOUT was probably centered in Mercy City, so the further away from the nut-jobs the better. And not that Leon would admit it, even in his own mind or to himself in general, he almost - _ALMOST_ - missed Paul's flailing. A bit. But just a bit.

_'Just a few hundred stories until I'm outta this Hell-hole...fantastic.'_

"Boomer!" Someone cried from behind him. He flinched as he felt the bullet just barely graze against his left forearm. A centimeter more to the left and it would have been slicing through his flesh.

"Watch where you're shooting!" Leon barked as he ducked behind a gurney to avoid a majority of the putrid liquid and guts that splattered all over. A few droplets landed on his boots, but it was nothing that would call a sizable horde.

"Sorry!" That was Francis. And really, he didn't sound to sorry.

_'Trust the Survivors, Paul? They practically shooting me, and they still think I'm human!'_

Giving off an irritated sigh, Leon leapt to his feet, turned around, and squeezed the trigger of his handgun three times in rapid succession, each bullet just barely dancing around the skin on Francis's head.

"Hey!" Francis squeaked, clutching his pistol close to his chest with wide eyes. Leon grinned smugly and turned back around, his turn accentuated by the quick thump of three bodies hitting the ground. Francis looked over his shoulder, still with wide eyes, and stared at the three Commons that were collapsed in a dead heap at his feet.

"You're welcome!" Leon called from around the corner.

"Aren't you going to do something?" Francis demanded to Bill. "He almost _shot_ me!"

"I didn't see anything." Bill snickered, jamming the muzzle of his M16 into the mouth of an attacking Infected and blowing the back of its head off.

Leon was ahead of them by two halls, moving swiftly through the clusters of Commons, slamming a few into the walls to burst their heads. He tripped even more of them, slamming his heel into their heads until they caved in. He led the way most of the time, sweeping through rooms and storming up stairs with the Survivors always just a little behind. They hardly stopped to rest in the safe-houses they came across, stopping for less and less time the higher they got.

After what seemed like days of traveling up the large building, they reached the last safe-house, the words scribbled on the wall telling them that after this, they'd be on their own, with the only way of having another safe-house coming from turning back. It was decided unanimously that they'd sleep for the night before attempting to call for an evac. Even Leon agreed, which came as a surprise to the Survivors. When they had been discussing if they wanted to rest or not, they hadn't even gotten the chance to ask Leon what he thought. The man just pulled out two blankets from a corner of the room, laid them on the floor, and, using his backpack as a pillow, covered himself from head to toe with a blanket, and laid still. They didn't argue, and laid down themselves, falling asleep quickly.

An hour after they had fallen into sleep, and forty minutes after Francis had started snoring, Leon shot up in bed, tossing the blanket off of him. His blue-green eyes glowed slightly in the dim light, banishing the darkness from his vision. He quietly stood, moving as quietly as he could to check each Survivor.

Satisfied that they were sound asleep, Leon crept over to the safe-house door, removed the safety bar, and walked out, pulling the door closed behind him and replacing the bar through the window. He paused to chuckle. How easy it was for an Infected to simply reach through the bars and remove the one thing keeping them out. If only other Infected were smarter.

Leon waltzed through the construction zones, peering over the ledges a few times, sticking his head where walls would have once been, had the world not gone to Hell. He marveled at the simplicity of it- life was typical one day, then the next it was not. And the world just kept on spinning. With apocalyptic scenarios, Leon had thought that it would be all dark and cloudy, raining quite a bit, and no stars in the skies at night. But the sky was still a cheerful blue during the day, and the stars still burned strongly out in space, not caring that the lives on Earth had drastically changed.

"That's enough dramatic thoughts." Leon thought out loud, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You can come out now, I know you're there." He called to the shadows underneath a scaffolding. He waited, silent, until three figures slid out of the shadows, clothed in thick riot gear, with guns trained on Leon's back. Leon glanced over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised, keeping his anger and overflowing annoyance in the three in check. "Oh, come off it, we all know that you're out of darts." Leon snorted, turning around slightly to face the BLACKOUT agents. "Coming all the way up here must have taken all of your ammunition. Your boss not give you a map to the safe-houses?" The agents were deathly quiet, keeping their empty pistols directed to Leon's heart.

"It can speak?" One of the three whispered, sounding like a young boy. Probably no older than twenty.

"It?" Leon snorted, indignant. "Let me make this abundantly clear. I don't like any of you, and I'm expending a _lot_ of energy to keep myself from attacking you all, _just_ because you all attacked be first and pissed me off. So it would be wise to remember that I am a 'he,' not an 'it.'"

"You won't attack?" The one who asked it, whoever it had been, sounded surprised, almost completely shocked.

"Why would I do that? I'd get blood in my teeth...okay, bad joke. I don't make a habit of attacking unarmed people, or at the very least people who don't pose a threat." Hardly anybody was unarmed these days, and those who were were just plain old stupid. "That's something that you can learn a lot about. Now it's my turn to ask the questions. Savvy?" He received no answer, but he didn't really care if they agreed or not. He was going to do what he wanted, especially since he was the one with the loaded gun. "What's BLACKOUT?"

"Classified."

"Okay...how did BLACKOUT know about me?"

"Classified."

"How was I involved with BLACKOUT in the first place?"

"Classified."

"Why are you following me and attacking me?"

"You are Infected."

"No shit, really?"

"Infected must die."

"Thanks for that. Made me feel a lot better about myself. What's your boss's name?"

"Classified."

"Back to this, are we? Fine, last question. Where's BLACKOUT's base of operations? I want to put in a complaint to your boss. No no, lemme guess, classified."

"Classified."

"Had a funny feeling you'd say that." Leon sighed heavily, running his right hand through his hair, brushing his bangs out of his face. "You people are a lot of help. Now, I suggest you make a run for it. Half of the people I'm with a trigger-happy, and won't hesitate to shoot someone that looks like they're going to attack. And come morning, this place is going to be crawling with Infected. I'd get out while I still could, if I was you. Now scram, before I decide letting you all go isn't a smart idea." Leon turned and began to stroll back to the concealed safe-house, when a shift of metal caught his attention. One of the agents had pulled the hammer back on his gun, even though there was nothing left to fire.

"Why are you helping us? You're Infected. We attacked you." The agent demanded. Leon paused, humming slightly as he mulled over his thoughts.

"I kill Infected," Leon said, finally deciding on his words. "not humans. You all may piss me off, but that doesn't mean you're not human. Humans need all the luck they can get if they're going to survive this Flu or whatever it is." The blonde man began to rummage through one of the pouches on his left hip, collecting a few of what he had there into the palm of his other hand. "But make no mistake. I'm giving you a chance, only one chance." He walked to the agents, two of them backing up while the third stood firm. Leon outstretched his clenched fist, and waited for the agent to lift his hand, albeit timidly. Leon dropped the couple dozen clips into the hands of the agent, fifteen rounds in a clip, and enough clips for each agent to have five to himself. "Don't go wasting this chance. I won't be so nice should you do so." Leon quickly made his retreat, getting a good enough distance away that he'd be around a corner should the agents decide to load their handguns. "There's a safe-house by the rear entrance to the hospital. Has enough bullets to get you to whatever vehicle you came in." Leon spun on his heels and trotted away before the agents could make a sound, reentered the concealed safe-house, and latched the door.

Once inside the safety of the barricaded room, Leon leaned against a wall, and released a long, soft sigh. After a few seconds of silence, he gave a light chuckle. _'What the hell did you just do?'_ He asked himself, making his way to where he had set up his impromptu bed. He laid down under the covers, pulling them up over his head and shutting his eyes that still glowed softly in the darkness._ 'If Paul had seen what I just did...'_ The blonde man almost shuddered at the thought. It would not have been pretty.

Leon didn't notice Bill's eyes slide closed on the other side of the room.

_**:::The Next Morning:::**_

"C'mon, up and at 'em, we've got an evac to get to!" Louis proclaimed happily, making his rounds around the room with a metal pan in one hand, and a wooden spoon in the other, banging them together every half a second to accentuate his chant.

"You are _far_ to cheerful in the morning." Leon grumbled, lifting the blanket away from his face as he turned his glare to the dark-skinned man. "It's only four in the morning!"

"Oh, good morning, grumpy-pus." Louis sang.

"I thought you _wanted_ to leave." Zoey giggled under her breath at the sight of a messy-haired Leon turning to look at her with groggy eyes.

"Zoey, I thank you for noticing." The blonde man sarcastically quipped. "And I _do_ want to leave, but answer me this- what evacuation team would be up this early in the morning?" Not to mention that he had only fallen asleep two hours ago, and hadn't slept very well the few times before, thanks to his concern for his friend and his worry about waking up to being attacked. Paul claimed the Survivors were competent, but Leon still had his doubts.

Silence fell over the Survivors. Well, except for Francis, who had managed to stay asleep throughout the commotion. The man had mastered sleeping as if he was hung over.

Three sets of cold glares turned to Louis, who was smiling sheepishly. He held up the frying pan that he had been using to make noise. "Breakfast, anyone?"

Ten minutes later and one tied-up-and-gagged Louis later, Leon and the other Survivors were relaxing in their beds again, closing their eyes for another three hours of sleep.

It was at seven when Bill decided that they had slept long enough, and that the chances of the evacuation team being awake was higher. So with slow feet, Leon and Zoey woke back up, and took turns "trying" to get Louis untied. Bill ended up cutting in, literally. He swiped the military-issued knife from the sheath up on Leon's left shoulder, near his chest, and sliced through the ropes that had been keeping Louis still so the man couldn't try to wake them all up again.

Twenty minutes later, and Francis was still not awake. "Come on, Francis, time to wake up and smell the death and decay." Leon called in a falsely cheerful voice, frowning when Francis just grumbled and rolled over. "Don't be such a baby and wake up."

"No." Was Francis's one-syllable grunt. At least, that's what the grunt was taken as. It could have just been a grunt. Leon bore a small smirk as he stepped to Francis's side, rummaging through his stuff.

"Francis, time to wake up and find your girlfriend." Leon pulled a magazine out of Francis's bag, of women in skimpy bikinis straddling Harley motorcycles. Leon made a face at the magazine, but shoved it in Zoey's direction. "Oh, wait, here they are. Zoey, what do you think about the women Francis associates himself with?"

Boy, was Francis up and running then.

He didn't reenter the safe-house, not once.

Leon enjoyed a good laugh at that.

The group restocked on ammunition, Leon managing to find replacement clips for the ones he had given to the BLACKOUT agents. He slipped a few into the small, individual pockets made for clips in his belt, before fitting more pre-loaded clips into the pockets of his pants, and into the large pouch on his left hip. The other pouches held his supply of bullets for his sniper and M16, both of which he slung over his back in an 'X,' and various other survival equipment that he'd still have should he lose his backpack. Which he had discretely filled the front pouch with an assortment of magazines and clips for his weapons, just in case he ran out. Nestled just out of sight inside the largest pocket of the backpack, wrapped in a blanket, was a laptop he had managed to fix and get working. What kind of laptop it was, he really didn't care. A laptop was a laptop, and it worked. That was all that mattered. Not that it was much help, anyway.

They made quick work of the construction zone, and Leon was pleased to see that the BLACKOUT agents had taken his advice and cleared out. By the strength of their scent in the area, they had left pretty much as soon as he had left them, and had come back the way they had came. _'Maybe there's hope for them yet.'_ Leon thought idly as he waited at the bottom of a ladder, providing cover for Zoey as she scrambled up the ladder to meet the rest. He picked off one last Common, clearing the last bullet in his Desert Eagle, before turning and jumping as high as he could without it being a super-jump, his right hand wrapping around a rung. He dangled there for a minute, before slipping his Desert Eagle into the holster at his side, and clambering the rest of the way up.

What he was greeted with was a sight that made his Infected blood sing.

He was on the top of the hospital, the tallest building in Mercy. He could see for miles in any direction, the smog of the city being the only thing keeping his eagle-sight from seeing further. Buildings were all around, tall buildings, and he could practically feel himself sailing over the gaps between the buildings, hundreds of feet above ground. A fall like that would most likely kill him.

_'Not now.'_ Leon told himself as his eyes scanned the ledges for a good place to jump to a building, any building._ 'You probably wouldn't make the jump in your condition.'_ He paused. _'Oh, and the Survivors, too.'_ He snorted at his own forgetfulness, following the noise of the Survivors talking to somebody over a radio on the other side of the roof.

The radio was inside a small building near the rear of the roof, the building having a large room on bottom, and then stairs up to a balcony with a minigun mounted on the railing. Leon grinned at the sight of the minigun. "Oh, this is going to be a blast." He thought out loud before entering the doors to the building, shutting them behind him. He placed a few boards over the door, locking them in place with arms extending from the walls near the doors, looking to have been hastily put in for this exact purpose by whoever had set up the evac site.

"So is help coming?" Leon asked, checking his line of sight through the windows of the small building. They wouldn't be able to hold out long in the radio building, that was for sure. They'd have to move around the building at some point, especially if all the Infected he could sense through the Hive would come after them. Though, how they would know that there were people on the roof was completely beyond him.

"I think..." Zoey said, having been the one to get to the radio first. A garbled voice came through the radio, and the brunette beamed. "Help's coming!" She said happily, throwing her arms around Leon in a quick hug, before backing away with an apologetic look. Leon seemed to have hardly noticed. "We have ten minutes until we're outta here. A helicopter will be coming." A comfortable silence spread over the group. And then Francis just had to go and break it.

"So...what do we do now?"

An unearthly chorus of screams ripped through the air, coming from all around the hospital, and through the cement under their feet.

The horde was coming.

"You just _had_ to ask." Bill sighed, hefting his M16 up, and checking the magazine.

"How do they even know we're here?" Leon complained. "We weren't even making any noise!" Even so, he took his place at a window that was partially shattered. At first he had his handgun trained out the window, before he shook his head, and placed it in the holster. He slid his sniper from his back, and fixed the muzzle out the window. He put his eye to the scope and waited, his finger on the trigger. At the first sign of an Infected - a Smoker - Leon's finger twitched, and the Smoker was spontaneously missing its head.

"Nice shot!" Bill called from his corner, his M16 flashing with each expelled round. Leon didn't make any sound to acknowledge the compliment, just refocused and fired. He kept at it with the sniper for a while, making all head-shots, when the horde finally became to much.

And then the King came.

"TANK!" Louis called in warning.

"Get to the balcony!" Leon ordered, thundering up the stairs and taking up a position at the minigun, swiveling it back and forth at the 170 degree angle that it could move at, searching for the beast that was making the entire building sway.

Seven minutes left.

The King came into sight, and Leon trained the minigun on the mountain of muscle and flesh. Leon narrowed his eyes, focusing down the sight mounted at the end of the gun.

"This is for Paul, you bastard." Leon whispered, and pulled the trigger.

Note to self: Never stand in front of a minigun.

The thing tore through the flesh of the King, who was trapped in a narrow alley of two small rooms on the roof. The bullets bore right through the skin and muscle and bone, all the way to the monstrous heart, which shredded like paper.

"Man, I have got to get me one of these!" Leon called over the noise of the gun, laughing loudly. And then the minigun choked once and died. "Uh...oops."

"Oops?! How do you break a minigun?!" Francis cried. Leon snatched his M16 off of his back, kicking a Common in the face, the Infected falling back off the railing and snapping its neck on the ground below.

"It's not broken, it's overheated, give it a minute!" Leon ducked spontaneously, his instincts have told him to do so. A Hunter overshot him by five feet, its pounce-screech turning into a surprised one as it sailed right off of the roof of the hospital, having expected the "human" to stop its flight forward. Leon froze for a moment, watching the Hunter vanish from sight. "Why'd we never try that before?" He asked himself, before shaking himself out of his thoughts.

Zoey had been dragged away by a Smoker, and after managing to break free by shooting the Smoker's head before she was pulled off of her feet, was calling for help from the other side of the building.

Instead of jumping off of the balcony, Leon dashed around the thick pipes that led from one roof-top room to the next, using them like bridges to get from one roof to the other.

He found her, practically buried under a small horde of her own, trying to fight off a Hunter that had her pinned. Leon jumped down from the pipes, rolling onto his shoulder to absorb the impact, and turned the roll into a flying kick into the Hunter's head. smacking a Common away with the back of his hand, the blonde Infected used his other hand to help Zoey to her feet. "Are you alright?"

"I'll survive." Zoey responded, quickly getting back into a fighting position, back-to-back with Leon.

"Good. Then run for your life!" Leon took off at a sprint, Zoey quickly following him. The two scrambled up a ladder that led to the balcony of the radio room, rejoining Bill and Louis, who were pulling Francis up. A Boomer had made its way up to the roof, and had detonated, almost throwing the biker clear off the roof.

Five minutes.

Another King appeared, and was quickly taken care of by the minigun again, which had been decided without speaking that it would be used solely for the arrival of the most dangerous Special.

"I can see the helicopter!" Louis cried, pointing. The gray metal dot on the horizon was almost impossible to pick out of the dark, swollen clouds, but the dim light of the sun reaching through the storm clouds glinted off the metal, reflecting it all over.

Rescue was almost there.

Four minutes to go.

"Don't stop fighting, dammit!" Bill ordered, swinging around and throat-punching a Common right off the balcony.

The heavens opened up and poured rain down on them all, the roof becoming slick with water, dust, and blood, Commons and Specials alike sliding all over the place comically. After the thunder and lightning started, the cracks of light hitting the lightning rod on the roof, the Hunters disappeared from the battle, frightened away just like a dog or a cat.

"Ha, we've got them on the run!" Francis cried happily, thrusting his shotgun into the air, before hastily pulling it back down when a bolt of lightning passed a bit to close for comfort.

"I'm almost positive it's the lightning." Leon dry commented, shaking water out of his eyes, glancing back to where he had seen the helicopter. It was closer, much closer.

Three minutes.

It was like a battle arena on Mercy Hospital's roof, the Commons and Specials that remained trying to crowd onto the balcony, and the Survivors always managing the battle them back.

Two minutes.

And then another King came.

This one came from behind, surprising all of them with it's appearance. Out of instinct and habit, Leon snatched at the minigun, swiveling it to face the King. Except it wouldn't turn that far, _couldn't_ turn that far.

The King punched him in the back.

He catapulted off of the side of the building.

"LEON!" Zoey and Louis screamed, gaining the attention of Bill and Francis.

"No time for that now, run!" Bill demanded, grabbing Zoey's hand and darting onto the pipes that Leon had used a few minutes before, balancing careful on the slick surface. The King slipped all over behind them, but kept its course, following after them.

One minute.

Zoey and Bill were trapped, backed up into a corner by the biggest Infected ever seen. Bill raised the M16, even though one M16 wouldn't be able to take down the brute. Out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, smashing into the head of the King. And with that bolt, came Leon, missing his M16 and sniper.

"Evac's here, go!"

"How'd you-"

"No time for questions, just _go_!" Leon ripped his Desert Eagle from its holster, kneeling on the dazed King's shoulders as he unloaded round after round into the thing's skull.

"I am not leaving you with a Tank _again_." Zoey growled. "Last time, you almost died."

"And we'll all die if you don't get your ass to the _helicopter_!" Bill didn't leave Zoey room to argue, grabbing at her hand and dragging her away. Seeing them out of sight, and knowing Louis and Francis were on the 'copter by the helipad, Leon flipped off the shoulders of the King, and took off running.

It had been a lucky break, that ledge right below the edge of the roof. Any further down, and he'd have had to try and rely on his pouncing ability, which he still wasn't sure would work at the moment.

_'Okay, think.'_ Leon thought, dodging around a punch from the King as he made his way back the way he had come. _'I have a handgun, that's it. Pipe Bombs don't work on this thing, and I don't have a molotov to catch it on fire. If I get to the minigun, he'll be out of turning-range.'_ Leon groaned. _'Crap, what do I do?'_

_It doesn't like lightning, right?_ Scott asked, Leon almost jumping at the sudden show of his instincts.

_'Nice of you to join me.'_ Leon commented dryly. _'...yes, it didn't like lightning.'_

_Then use lightning._

_'And how am I supposed to use lightning, sensei?'_ Scott didn't answer.

Leon used a ladder to climb up on top of one of the roof-rooms, the King trying to find a good way to get on the roof. Leon looked around, frowning. He stared at the lightning rod, blinking as he watched lightning strike it. "Wait a minute..." Leon watched as the lightning hit the rod of metal again. "That's it!" The blonde Infected nimbly slid along a thin pipe to the section of the roof that held the lightning rod. He paused, debating. With a final decision, and smelling the ozone in the air, Leon wrapped his right hand around the thick metal pole. "This is gonna hurt like a bitch..."

Lightning snapped at the pole, running down its length, and then filtering into Leon's arm. It gathered in his right fist for a moment, before shooting through the rest of his body. He felt like he was on fire, every nerve ending screaming out in agony as the energy rushing about his system. The only thing that didn't hurt was his right hand, all the way to the middle of his forearm.

The King was before him now, thundering towards him. Leon stretched his left hand out, splaying his fingers, praying that it would work as lightning considered to jam itself into his body. With nowhere else to go, the lightning leapt in an arc out of Leon's hand, hitting the thing closest to him.

Which just so happened to be the King.

All of the lightning shot from Leon's body, slamming into the King in one powerful blast. Simultaneously, Leon flew backwards at the amount of energy expelled, his back slamming into a wall. The pain he had already felt from his spine doubled at that point. "Seriously?" Leon whined.

The King was suddenly in front of him again, the front of its chest burnt black, a nasty glare on its face. Leon slowly climbed to his feet, clenching his right hand into a fist. "Just go die already!" Leon ordered, slamming his right fist into the King's chest. The beast crackled with electricity, squealing like a pig as its heart finally gave out. Leon just stood there in the rain, staring at his right fist as the last remnants of the lightning faded away into the cloth, and then into his fist. "I can conduct electricity...?" He asked out loud.

_Sorta. To an extent._

"Can I control it? Like, produce it?"

_No and no. Just transfer it._

"Make new energy with leftover electricity?"

_You're not a battery. No._

"Then what's the point?!" Scott was silent, as always. "Gee, thanks."

"Leon!" Louis cried from the helicopter that appeared from behind a roof-top room, the metal contraption circling around towards him. "You're alive!"

"Yup!" He frowned, counting the Survivors. One...two...three...three. "Where's Zoey?"

"Here." A voice from behind said. Leon jumped and spun around. There stood Zoey, her handgun clutched in her hand at her side. "You could have killed yourself doing that. I saw it from over there." She said, pointing, making no mention if she heard Leon "talking to himself."

"It worked, didn't it?" Leon responded. "And what about you? I told you to get on the helicopter!"

"I wasn't going to just leave you here!" Zoey snapped back. "The helicopter will land for us, too. We're fine."

And, with those famous last words, the building began to quake. Two Kings were clambering up the side of the building, driving their fists through the walls.

"You're kidding me! Hey! Land the helicopter!" Leon shouted up to the pilot. Bill turned his head, listening to the pilot, before turning back to Zoey and Leon. He shook his head.

"He won't get close with the Tanks so close!" He shouted over the loud noise. Leon looked between Zoey, the helicopter, and the two Kings that were now charging at them. They only had their handguns, not anything that could take down a King, and Leon was out of electricity to redirect.

"I'm going to regret doing this..." Leon sighed, holstering his gun.

"Leon...?" Zoey asked, watching him with surprise. He looked like he was giving up, resigned to his death.

"Zoey, you need to promise not to be pissed at me. You need to promise."

"Wha-"

"Promise." Leon broke through what she was saying, his gaze intense. And was it just her, or were the edges of his irises bleeding yellow, with the whole of his irises glowing slightly? And were those _fangs_ that she was finally noticing?

"I...I promise. But what-" She gasped as Leon scooped her up bridal style, and when Leon's feet left the roof, she screamed.

They sailed up into the air, flying in an arc at the helicopter. The pilot, seeing the thing flying towards them, tried to pull away, but Leon latched onto the side of the door with his right hand, his bone-claws denting the metal into the shape of his claws. He balanced for a moment on the edge, before throwing himself inside, landing in a heap with Zoey on the other side of the helicopter. For a second, all was still, the Kings roaring in rage below.

Zoey scrambled away from Leon once her wits came back to her, and Leon twisted himself to hold his broken ankle. "Ow..." He muttered, rubbing at the sore part of his leg, wincing at the pressure. "Knew pouncing was out of the question..." Ignoring Zoey's wide eyes, Louis's gaping mouth, Francis's handgun trained on his chest, and Bill's blank stare, Leon limped over to the open door, leaning on the door as he watched a King lift up a red canister. Leon's eyes widened, and he limped to the cockpit. The pilot, who had seen Leon's jump, recoiled as he came in, his hand reaching for the gun.

"You need to pull away from the hospital. Yesterday would be nice."

"Wha-?"

"That King is holding up a thing of gasoline. You know what lightning likes? Metal. You know what that thing of gasoline is made out of? Metal. Remember what happens when gasoline is super-heated?" The pilot's eyes widened, and he jerked the helicopter away from the building, a second to late.

Lightning shot down from the clouds, striking the canister, and in a split second, it exploded. Shrapnel tore through the helicopter, a piece slicing into the skull of the pilot, the other pieces thankfully missing everybody else, and anything important. The pilot was dead, though, and the helicopter began to spin out of control.

"Shit." Leon breathed, pushing the pilot aside as he took the controls. For a moment, he just stared at the large dashboard of switches, buttons and blinking lights. Then, as if possessed, Leon's hands darted out, and he flipped a few switches, before taking the controls, and righting the helicopter. He beamed at his own hands, the bandages partially burned away on his right hand. "Hey, I can fly a helicopter! Sweet!" He paused at the feeling of a barrel of a shotgun pressed against the back of his skull. Even so, he kept flying straight, away from the burning hospital roof, and through the rough winds. "You can go ahead and try and kill me." Leon spoke through the heavy silence. "I can't guarantee what'll happen, though."

"What? Going to kill us if I do?" Francis growled through grit teeth. Leon chuckled.

"No, I'm saying I don't know if it'll kill me or not. And considering buckshot through the control panel of the only thing keeping you in the air right now isn't a good thing, I don't recommend pulling that trigger." Silence once more took over the cockpit, the barrel of the gun never leaving his head.

"You jumped. Like a Hunter."

"Yes." No point in denying it now. It had to have been forty feet, if not a little more.

"You're Infected." Silence.

"...yes." A muffled gasp came from behind him, but Leon didn't care to find out which. His grip on the controls tightened, as did Francis's grip on the trigger of his shotgun.

"You lied to us." Louis whispered from the back.

"I never lied." Leon called back to the dark-skinned man. "I merely twisted the truth a bit."

"Now isn't the time for sarcasm, kid." That was Bill, standing by the door that he had slid closed.

"Now is the _perfect_ time for sarcasm!" Leon snapped back, his shoulders raising, his grip on the controls nearly bending them in half.

"Just calm-" Leon cut the old veteran off.

"Don't tell me to calm down! This is an apocalypse where everything likes me gets shot without question, I'm flying a giant metal death trap, and I have a shotgun to the back of my _head!_ Don't tell me to calm down. Now, I'm trying to focus on flying this stupid thing, and a shotgun near my face isn't helping, so _move. The. Gun."_ Leon glared back at Francis of his shoulder, his eyes involuntarily flashing yellow. The change in color alone made Francis back off slightly, the gun lowering. Satisfied, Leon turned back to the controls, a frown etched into his face. A quiet blanket once more fell over the Survivors, Leon scowling out the windshield as he focused on keeping the helicopter level.

"Th..." Zoey cleared her throat. "Thank you. For getting me to the helicopter and saving Bill and me from the Tank, I mean. Or a, uh, King, I think you called it."

"No problem." Leon replied, his voice soft, level.

"You're a Hunter, then?" Zoey spoke again, and Leon threw her a small smile over his shoulder.

"Guess again."

"Well, you're not a Smoker or a Boomer, or a Tank. So...Unknown?"

"I get points for being original." Leon proclaimed. "I'm known as the Predator." He said after a moment. "All the best aspects from the Special Infected, none of the insanity. Thank God."

"I think I knew." Bill said. "I think I've known, for a while at least."

"You wouldn't be the first to notice." Leon gave a soft, humorless laugh. "Paul noticed before I even did."

"So Paul knew? And what do you mean by "before" you?" Louis questioned.

"Yes, Paul knew. And I wasn't lying when I said I can't remember a day before meeting Paul. Everything I told you on the apartment roof was true. Just with a bit of training to get the jumping thing down, that was excluded."

"Just one more question. _For now._" Bill said, emphasizing his last words, watching discretely as Leon smiled at the words. They meant that they wouldn't be killing him because of him being Infected. It meant that they weren't going to kick him from the group, or rat him out to anybody.

"Would you have killed us, if you had the chance?" Leon's face gained a horrified look at the question.

"I would never...I couldn't..." He cleared his throat. "No." He said, his voice strong, final. "I would never have killed you." He looked over his shoulder, making eye contact with each and every Survivor. "Any of you. And I never will." He blinked. "You have my promise on that." His head snapped back to the front, keeping an eye on the devices and controls at the front. "Now I have a question for all of you. Two, actually." He paused, taking a breath. "Why are you all trusting me? Other Survivors would have just shot me on sight because of my status."

"Because you've proven yourself trustworthy. Enough, anyway." Bill answered. "And Paul trusts you. I trust his judgement. That man loves his family to much, and wants to see them to badly, to trust something or someone who would kill him." Leon nodded, accepting the answer.

"One more...are you all pissed at me?" It wouldn't really matter either way. Anyway, that's what Leon was telling himself.

"Beyond pissed." Zoey said. Leon's face fell, before jumped when the college girl flopped down in the co-pilot seat. She was grinning. "How could you not tell me you were a zombie? A teammate, a real-live, not-crazy zombie! It's, like, straight out of the movies! This completely rocks!"

"Well, I know where Zoey stands on this, what about the rest of you?"

"I understand why you didn't say anything." Louis said. "You were just scared."

"Was not!" The Survivors chuckled at Leon's indignant cry.

"I would have liked to know, but I'll forgive you. If not now, then eventually." Leon was happy enough with the veteran's answer.

"Whatever." Leon grinned at Francis's response. So the biker wasn't pissed. That was good.

"Good. And thank you, all of you. You're the first people that I've trusted besides Paul. Now, let's get to that evac camp!" The helicopter surged forwards, towards where the clouds were parting to reveal the bright sun. Everything was staring to look up.

And then the helicopter began to beep and tilt back and forth, from its left side to its right in a partial barrel roll.

"Hm...that's not supposed to happen."

"LEON!"

Yes, everything was looking up.

**_:::Mindscape:::_**

Scott chuckled as he watched through Leon's eyes, the helicopter flipping all over the sky like a hyperactive bird. The Survivors were all screaming, but Leon was silent, focusing on righting the helicopter.

_"Still crashing things, I see."_ He said, mostly to himself. A sudden feeling embraced him, and he stiffened. Scott waved his hand through the mist that allowed him to see out into the real world, dispersing the screen back into tiny droplets of water. _"So you've finally shown yourself."_ Scott called over his shoulder, not wanting to turn around to face whatever monstrosity had taken up residence in Leon's mindscape. A deep, echoing growl came from the direction of the pure hate, the pure thirst for blood.

Scott finally turned, his eyes scanning the mist for the figure he was looking for. Finally, he found it, the shadow in the mist growing in strength as the specter drew forwards. Scott's eyes widened, and his already slightly-pale skin grew whiter._ "Who are you?" He whispered. Through the shadows and the mist, a large grin stretched across th_e monstrosity's face, four long fangs on each row of teeth dripping with saliva, each other individual tooth sharpened into a fine point, like shark's teeth. Something long and thin whipped back and forth behind the figure, slicing through the thick mist. _"Who are you?"_ Scott demanded again, this time his voice a bit stronger, but still wavering.

**_"I'm you."_** The being spoke, and even as it spoke the language of the Infected, its voice still sounded like a growl mixed with words. **_"And I'm him."_** It waved what could be taken for a hand at the screen that had reappeared, showing Leon's struggle with the helicopter.

_"Okay..."_ Scott said slowly, swallowing thickly at the fresh wave of malice that slammed into him, bile rising in his throat at the feeling. _"What's your name, then?"_ The growl returned, and something passed over the fangs of the being. A tongue.

**_"Berserker."_**

The thing lunged.

* * *

><p><strong>And that's the end to that! XD Sorry, people, but that's the end of WiSC.<strong>

**...I'm kidding.**

Don't worry, this is just the end to the first arc. The first campaign. No Mercy is officially complete, next is...um...which one did I say I was going to do next? Oh, right. Death Toll is next. Yeah, I'm doing them out of order, but it's for a greater purpose! There's more RE characters that are going to be coming in with Crash Course, and there's one character that needs to come in before that, who HAS to be met in a forest-y region, so... Yay for being a fanfic author, where I can do what I want!

Please review! They're very appreciated, and keep my writing.

**P.S. -** If none of you liked Scott coming up, don't worry. He won't be in there a lot. I just kinda made him up on the spot, against better judgement I supposed. XD

**P.P.S -** This chapter is 29 pages long, and 15,682 words long. Be happy for the equivalent of season finales, right? A season finale in book writing form, with none of the year-long wait between seasons.

**P.P.P.S -** Now it's at 15,614. You're welcome. Oops, 15,717.

_~ Kitsune-242_


	6. Forest of the (Zombie) Wolves

Disclaimer: Uh...hi? Heh heh...yeah, I'm back. Still alive! ...sorry about not updating. Stuff to do, and whatnot. And procrastinating. Lots and lot of procrastination went into the delay in this update. But hey! It's like an _actual _break between seasons in a series! Aren't I making this so realistic? And I already have the next chapter planned somewhat! Does that make up for my idiotic behavior?

...put the tomatoes down.

PUT THEM DOWN!

**P.S.: Please read the Author's Note at the end. At least, part 1, about the "Paul Side-Story" thing. **I'd like your input. Short overview: Do you want to have a side-story about what happens to Paul between when he leaves and when he meets back up with Leon later? And if so, do you want it to be short, a-few-paragraphs omakes at the end of each chapter, or do you want it to be a separate story that I upload and update as I go along? **IT'S IMPORTANT. **Bold catches your attention, doesn't it?

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6<strong>

**Forest of the (Zombie) Wolves**

"Pull up! PULL UP!"

"I'm WORKING ON IT!"

"YOU'RE NOT WORKING ON IT ENOUGH! DO TELEKINESIS OR SOMETHING, YOU DAMN VAMPIRE!"

"SINCE WHEN DID I BECOME TELEKINETIC, YOU MORON?!"

"DodgethetreeDODGETHETREE!"

_CRAASSSSHHHHHHH! _

Silence...

Dust floated around the cabin of the trashed helicopter, the metal creaking and groaning from where it was pressed up against the branches and trunk of the tree that it had collided into. And through this dust, came two words.

"...nailed it."

The voice was filled with pride, though slightly winded and strained, like whoever was speaking was proud of the fact that they had accomplished some type of task.

"That's a load of horseshit!" An older voice said, gagging on the dust.

"I landed it, didn't I?" The man who was speaking swiped at his impromptu seatbelt - a few cords he had found at random while the helicopter had been crashing - with his right hand, the bones protruding from his fingers to form claws tearing through the ropes. He dropped unceremoniously on his head with a very indignant and very unmanly squeak, nearly biting through his own tongue.

"Sexy." A sarcastic, obviously annoyed voice called from the back of the helicopter, the tone light and obviously feminine. "Mind helping _us _down? I mean, it's only fair, considering you're the one who crashed the stupid helicopter in the first place."

"Ahem." The blonde-haired man with the strangely-mutated hand cleared his throat, rolling onto his stomach to stare up at the upside-down young brunette woman who was trapped in her seat by an actual seatbelt. Lucky her. "I didn't crash the helicopter. I landed it." He glanced out the shattered windshield - which had lodged more than a few shards into his chest and face - at the tree the cockpit was jammed into. "Freestyle." He added as an afterthought. One of his traveling companions, a rough-looking biker, was mumbling something about him being a bad flier. He wasn't a bad flier. Let's see somebody _else _land a helicopter upside-down in a tree without making the 'copter catch fire or explode. And everybody was alive and well, right? Right. He was the only one with glass in his face, thank you very much.

Even so, he pushed himself to his feet, unsteadily making his way across the ceiling of the helicopter to the nearest man. It was a black man, dressed in a shirt that had once been nice with a raggedy red tie to top off the businessman look. He stared at the blonde man with trepidation; he was shaking so hard in his seat, his arms hanging over his head, that the metal of his jammed seatbelt buckle was rattling. There was a gash on his forehead, and though it was small and would be easy to fix, the blonde man knew that head wounds could be worse than originally thought.

"Louis." He said, bracing himself against a wall with his left hand to keep his weight off of his broken ankle. "Are you okay?" The black man nodded his head shakily, his eyes almost impossibly wide.

"...Leon, no more flying helicopters." He muttered, and the blonde, Leon, chuckled with a nod.

"I'm going to cut you down now, okay?" Louis nodded at the question. Leon ignored the way that Louis involuntarily drew away from the bone-based claws, slipping his fingers under the belt. He jerked his hand towards him, the claws slicing through the thick strap with much more resistance than the cords that had held Leon to his chair. When the belt slackened and Louis fell, Leon helped keep him from slamming face-first into the ceiling of the helicopter. Once Louis was on his feet and moving carefully around the helicopter to search for guns or ammunition that had been thrown in the crash, Leon moved on to help the older man - Bill - the biker - Francis - and the college girl - Zoey - from their own seats, catching each one to keep them from any further harm.

The helicopter creaked, shifting slightly in the branches at the suddenly randomly shifting weight from five people walking around on the new floor.

"Too bad this is unsteady." Leon mused, peering at the ground near his feet. "Would have been a good place to form a base for the night..."

"Would have been a good way to get to a camp, too." Francis grumbled, staring uncertainly at the partially mangled doorway on the side of the helicopter.

"Well, there's that." Leon looked up. "We need to get out of here before we fall out of the tree." He moved as he spoke, sliding past the other four to get to the door. He stuck his head out, mentally measuring the distance from the door to the forest floor below. About twenty feet, maybe twenty five. "Think you can make that?" Leon asked to the nearest Survivor, which just so happened to be Bill.

"Boy, was Paul ever willing to take a fall like that?" Bill asked with a blank stare. Leon slowly shook his head. "Then no, we can't make that." Leon sighed with a roll of his eyes.

_'Looks like I'm going to have to do everything, huh, Scott?' _Leon waited a grand total of two seconds for a response, and wasn't surprised when he got none. Ten minutes later of jumping up and down between the helicopter and the forest floor - he conveniently ignored his aching ankle - all of the Survivors were on the forest floor, and Leon was re-buckling his backpack onto his back.

"Great." Zoey breathed, turning round and round to look at the endless trees around them, nervously drumming her fingers on her handgun. All she had was her handgun, and that wasn't sitting well with her.

It was mostly only handguns in the group; the better guns had been lost in the crash. All that remained was Bill's M16, and Francis's shotgun. Even Leon's sniper had been lost, which hadn't made the blonde Infected too happy.

"What do we do now?" The only female demanded. She turned back to the group, waiting for an answer. "Do we even know what direction the evac camp is in?" The Survivors were silent, as if they just now realized the problem that was laid out before them. Leon, on the other hand, turned away from the Survivors, tilting his head back to sniff at the air.

The scents were very different from the city, that much was obvious right from the beginning. Unlike the prevalent stench of death and decay, the smell of the forest was much cleaner. The smell of decay was still there, of course, but it was so minor compared to the city that it almost made Leon laugh with joy. He spent a few seconds identifying and memorizing scents for later use, before picking through the ones that were present, searching for any that might help.

Ah. There. Right there.

Leon slowly turned in a circle, still sniffing the air, trying to find the general direction of the scent. When he stopped spinning, he was facing southwest, towards what looked like a deeper section of the forest.

"We go that way." The Predator broke the silence, pointing the direction he was facing. He matched the stares of the group with his own.

"Why?" Francis demanded.

"Because," Leon spoke slowly, as if the answer was obvious. To him, it was. "there's people that way. Well _a _person." Again, he received blank stares. Not one person said a word. "Really? You never thought an Infected had a heightened sense of smell?" When nobody responded, he sighed, shaking his head. Sometimes, he swore the Survivors were clueless. "How do you think Lesser and Greater Infected always found you? Sense of smell and hearing. And taste, but that's beyond the point. We go that way."

"And who died and made you leader?" Francis demanded. Leon blinked slowly, before shrugging. He plopped down on the ground, leaning back leisurely on his hands.

"Okay, where do _you _say we go, oh wise and powerful leader?" Leon asked. He held up a hand for silence when Bill began to protest, glancing between the older man and the biker with a pointed look. Bill nodded in comprehension and fell silent. Francis was sputtering, blinking rapidly. He glanced around in confusion. At seeming random, he pointed.

"That way! We go that way." Leon waved him on.

"Then go." Francis glowered, and marched off, brandishing his shotgun. Louis looked between the two groups - a retreating Francis and the rest of the Survivors - with uncertainty.

"I'll go with him and make sure he doesn't shoot himself." Louis announced with a sigh. He trotted off after the shotgun-toting man, leaving Leon, Bill, and Zoey on their own.

"Shouldn't we be following them?" Zoey asked. Leon laughed through his nose with a slight smile.

"That man is going to get turned around within the hour, and be back here within two."

"And you know this how?" Bill asked, shouldering his M16 and shifting his weight to his other leg. Leon tapped at his left ear, and then at the side of his nose.

"We landed-"

"Crashed."

"-_landed,_" Leon repeated with a glare to Zoey who smiled cheerfully. "in a ravine. It tapers in the direction that Francis headed in. The only way out," He pointed in the opposite direction that Francis had headed. "is that way." It was also the direction that Leon had originally pointed to. Surprise surprise. "There's a difference in the scents between the way Francis went and the _right _way, and the sounds are amplified by the sound waves bouncing along the walls, and are bounced back from a while that way." He paused, letting the information sink in. "Ravine." He repeated needlessly.

The two stared at him, to which he returned the stares with his own. "You're one weird boy, you know that?" Bill asked. Leon allowed a small smile, though on the inside he was torn between the smile and giggling hysterically just to poke fun at the gray-haired man.

"Just wait, I have more surprises yet." He flexed his right hand, his smile faltering as he stared at the bone-formed claws and the tough skin that was decorated with thin scratches. There was no blood, though, and he didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Could his hand even bleed? If it couldn't, how would the scratches heal? Or would they not?

Huffing quietly to himself, he grabbed the rest of the tatters of the bandages that were still partially wrapped around his hand, and did the best he could to re-cover the dark hide and long claws. Even when he had used up all of the rest of the mostly-ruined bandages, a good portion of his hand was still uncovered for the world - or what was left of it - to see.

"Great." He muttered to himself. He didn't bother checking his backpack; he knew that he didn't have any health packs left. A hand suddenly entered his vision, a small roll of white held in the thin fingers. Leon glanced up, and Zoey smiled down at him.

"I have extra. Here." Leon began to shake his head - bandages were hard to come by these days - but Zoey interrupted him. "Really, take them. It's the least I can do after you saved me from those two Tanks." Leon paused, before taking the bandages with a thankful nod. "now that we have time and we're on the subject of bandages, pull up your pant leg. I want to check your ankle. Don't give me that look, it's bothering you and I know it. All of that jumping probably didn't help."

She sat down across from Leon with a stubborn expression, crossing her arms with a firm stare. Leon snorted in laughter, but pulled up his pant leg to his knee and extended the injured limb. Zoey unwrapped the old bandages, grimacing at the swollen joint, the foot twisted a few degrees too far inward.

"Doesn't that hurt? Or do Infected not feel pain, because that'd kinda make a bit of sense, especially with the movies and videos games about zombies that I've seen. I mean, you were limping, but that could have just been out of habit from having to act human-"

"Zoey." Bill sighed, shaking his head. Zoey looked up from the injury she had ended up staring at, and met Leon's slightly amused gaze.

"It hurts like a bitch." He replied evenly, and laughed as Zoey smiled. "I don't know about other Infected, but yes, I feel pain." He looked back down to his hand and continued to wrap it until each finger was wrapped individually, with only the very tips of his claws uncovered. Might as well leave them bare so he could use them for whatever reason. A shock of pain ran up his leg, radiating from his ankle, and he jolted where he sat, crying out in a mixture of pain and surprise. Zoey smiled sheepishly at him, his realigned foot in her hands.

"Sorry, just wanted to re-set the bones." Leon tried to glare at her, but couldn't find it in him, so he settled on a strange look that was like a mix of a glare and a grin, the overall image funny enough to elicit laughter from the two Survivors. Zoey rewrapped his ankle tightly, and pulled his pant leg back into place once she was done.

"Now it's not healed yet, so none of your super-jumps, got it?"

"Super-jumps." Leon chuckled. "That's what Paul calls them." His face suddenly went blank, and he palmed his forehead. "Aaahhh crap."

"What?" Bill looked over from where he had been inspecting a bush that he had _sworn _had shifted. He lifted his M16, glancing around for any threat.

"I told Paul we'd be there within a week, and he told me once that if I ever don't live up to a promise, he's going to hunt me down and cut my head off."

"He wouldn't do that." Zoey laughed, but fell silent at the pointed look Leon gave her.

"You don't know Paul like I do. He'd sooner throw me off of a skyscraper than listen to whatever excuse I had." Leon turned his head to the left, raising an eyebrow a split second before Francis stormed back into their little clearing, Louis following dutifully after him. He didn't look at anybody, his eyebrows lowered over his eyes in a deep scowl. He swept past all of them, towards the direction that Leon had pointed to begin with. Leon smiled cockily at him.

"Shut up." He growled, and continued on walking, disappearing through a few trees. Leon spurred to his feet, and spun his handgun on his right index finger a few times before latching onto the grip. He jerked his head in the direction that Francis and Louis had vanished into. He trotted after the two, completely content with himself, and more than a little entertained.

At least they were in the forest. Not much could happen in the forest.

**_:::Two Hours Later:::_**

_'I jinxed myself I _totally _jinxed myself.' _Leon thought in annoyance, stomping repeatedly on the Common Infected's head until the skull caved in. He ground his heel into the gore for good measure, mentally swearing in three different languages - he knew three different languages? Well, okay, one was English and the other was Infected Tongue, but seriously, why did he know Finnish - as he did so.

He had thought that, because they were in the middle of a forest, where not many people tended to wander, there wouldn't be many Infected, if any at all. But Leon had never had much luck, and now was not the time to break that habit, apparently.

Francis, unlike Leon, was having the time of his life. He had run out of loaded shells, and had switched to using his shotgun like a bat, swinging it with both hands into the face of any Infected that strayed too close. Which included Leon, the goose-egg on the back of his head being a testament to that. Aside from Francis, none of the other Survivors were too pleased with the return of the Infected.

Leon spun around, hardly even pausing to aim before pulling the trigger. The bullet missed its mark by a few inches, but it still tore through the shoulder of the Infected, the close range of the shot spinning the Infected around. Its legs tangled beneath it, and it collapsed in a bloody heap. It moaned and twitched in a poor attempt to get back up. Leon ignored it, deciding that trying to get the bloodthirsty Hunter off his back would be a better idea.

"Boomer!" Zoey cried, and a loud explosion of sound later, a new surge of Infected flooded onto the trail they had found. Leon executed a quick flying axe kick into the jaw of an Infected, turning the move into a backflip that brought the toes of his foot down on the crown of another Infected's head. Both fell heavily, with Leon landing in a crouch. His ankle barely ached with the movement, but he winced none the less.

"I could use some help over here!" Bill cried from somewhere off to his left, and Leon fired blindly towards what he hoped were Infected and not the old man himself. Bill's call of gratitude made Leon sigh shortly in relief, and he turned to where Louis was fighting off his own mini-horde with an empty handgun, his ammunition stores exhausted.

Leon gave a small leap, the jump easily clearing the heads of the Infected surrounding Louis. He landed heavily on the head of one of the Infected, crushing it under his weight and momentum. He threw two clips to Louis, providing cover for the dark-skinned man as he reloaded his own handgun.

"Is it just me or is this place worse than the city?" Leon asked over his shoulder as he stood back-to-back with the businessman.

"Is it just me or are you more talkative?" He shot in reply.

"What can I say? I don't have to worry about you all shooting me in the head anymore." Leon ducked under a darting tongue from a Smoker, and jabbed at it with the uncovered tips of his claws, perforating the slimy muscle with a small grin. "Well, Francis might." Louis barked in laughter, the sound turning into a squeak as a Hunter tried to pounce him; Leon ripped the screeching Infected off of the other man roughly, throwing it into a tree and unloading lead into its stomach until it stopped twitching.

"This is getting on my nerves." Louis muttered as he accepted Leon's hand. The blonde man snorted in agreement, turning to face the writhing mass of Infected that Bill, Francis, and Zoey were still trapped in. "Do you have a pipe bomb?"

"I have a pipe, but it's lacking the bomb." Leon replied, waving around a piece of PVC that he had randomly found. He jammed it through the eye socket of the nearest Infected unceremoniously. "Shall we?" The two dove into the crowd of bodies, kicking and punching and shooting anything that moved. More than once they almost shot each other. They were slowly cutting down the number of Infected, but the number was still too large to fight, and ammunition was beginning to run painfully low.

And then _it _jumped into the fray.

It was a blur of white, darting around Infected and between legs. Commons fell left and right, their legs, arms, or heads ripped clean from their bodies. The Infected turned their attention from the Survivors to the white blur, attempting to fall on it in unison in an attempt to kill or attack it. Each attempt failed, however, for the white blur was just too fast.

One Hunter, who had a better aim than the rest, managed to clip the white blur, sending it spinning to the ground.

It was a white wolf, and it was _huge. _The mammoth of an animal was probably four feet to the tops of its ears, with massive paws and long fangs glistened in its mouth. Its yellow eyes were piercing, and the fur between its shoulder blades and on the back of its neck was longer than the rest.

It snarled at the Infected, saliva dripping from its fangs, and Bill swore. "We have to fight wolves now?"

"Hopefully the vampires and the wolf will kill each other." Francis said, aiming his shotgun at the nearest Infected just in case.

And then the back of the wolf split, from its shoulder blades to its hips, and long, thin tentacles burst out to claw and slash wildly at the air. Zoey jumped with a screech, and the rest of the Survivors cried out with words that were less than child-friendly. Leon, however, stayed silent, his glazed-over eyes trained on the huge wolf.

"We have to fight _Infected _wolves?!" Bill yelled, correcting his earlier statement.

The wolf lunged at the Infected, tearing into them with claws, fangs, and tentacles, body parts and blood flying. The tentacles, though looking much like a smoother version of a Smoker's tongue, slashed through flesh and bone with terrifying ease, decapitating a large number of them in one sweep. The wolf mowed through the Infected like they were nothing, and within five minutes all of the Infected lay dead.

The wolf stood in the middle of the carnage, panting slightly, blood splattering its white coat. The tentacles curled up and retreated into the split in its back, and the muscles, skin, and fur stitched itself seamlessly back together, leaving the wolf looking whole and less Infected.

Guns were trained on the wolf in seconds, regardless of if they had bullets in them or not. Leon was the only one that didn't lift his gun. In fact, he only stared at the wolf, and the wolf stared back. The wolf tilted his head, and Leon tilted his. The wolf's yellow eyes gained a brighter sheen, as if they were glowing, and Leon's eyes faded to a bright, luminescent yellow. He blinked, and the color was gone, and the wolf was no longer looking at him, but at the other Survivors with an expression that almost looked to ask: "Friends of yours?" At the sight of the guns, the wolf almost looked to roll its eyes.

It sat down on the blood forest floor, looking like it didn't even care that its life was potentially in danger. Leon raised an eyebrow at the Infected wolf. His vision flashed.

A deserted trail in a foreign land.

A bright circle of jagged metal.

A white wolf, whimpering in pain.

A massive creature with fists like wrecking balls.

That same wolf again, howling to the sky.

His vision returned to the present, and he blinked a few time to clear the stars from his eyes, shaking his head to further clear his vision. Was that a flashback? Well, what else could it be? there weren't many other possibilities, after all, especially considering it was him getting the images. Unless the wolf was suddenly telepathic. Which, again, might be possible what with the Infection being almost completely random.

_'Nah, it's a wolf. If it was originally a human, it might be possible.' _Leon thought with an ever-so slight shake of his head. Even so, it was a fellow Infected, and how it wasn't attacking was a good sign. At least, he hoped it was.

Leon took a step away from Survivors, "accidentally" stepping in front of Francis's shotgun; which was probably the only gun that still had a shell in its chamber. "Hello." He called to the wolf, ignoring the warning hiss from on of the Survivors behind him. The wolf cocked its head slightly, though confusion wasn't on its face - how Leon could tell, he didn't know. He guessed it was an Infected thing. - and its right ear twitched. "I'm Leon. These are my friends. That's Zoey, Bill, Louis, and the grumpy one is Francis."

"Leon, what in the hell are you doing?" Bill snapped, and Leon sent him a brief glare over his shoulder.

"He's Infected, I'm Infected, and he's clearly not as stupid as the other Infected, or a normal wolf. We might be able to get out of this without having to kill the thing and risk dying ourselves. Now _shut up._" He turned back to the wolf, and approached it slowly, holding out his right hand - his mutated hand - for the wolf to sniff.

For a moment, the wolf just glanced between Leon's hand and his face, as if asking: "What am I supposed to do with this?" The wolf seemed to realize what Leon was waiting for, and lowered its head to sniff Leon's proffered hand. It licked Leon's hand once, before pulling away and staring intently at him.

And then Leon realized something very, _very _important.

What on Earth was he supposed to do now?

The wolf beat him to it, though.

It looked back and forth between Leon and the Survivors, before settling on Leon. "Hey." A young male voice said, originating_ from the wolf_ as the white animal moved its jaw up and down in time with the words. The jaws of each Survivor dropped with Francis dropping his beloved shotgun, and Leon blinked his dinner plate-sized eyes. "You don't remember me, Leon? I'm a bit hurt. Well, not really, this new Infection crap does wonders to your memory, I hear. Not like the ones you're used to dealing with, right? I mean, you've always been able to prevent an outbreak like this with the other ones, but not this one. You must be losing your touch, especially since this one finally managed to infect _you._ I was always under the assumption you were immune to everything. Not even the Plaga could stop you, and you carried it around inside you to the point it almost tore you apart from the inside!" The wolf frowned,_ actually frowned. _

"I wasn't so lucky, as you can see. This new infection re-awoke a Plaga parasite that got inside of me, but the infection altered it. I'm in control of it. Which is nice, obviously. Wait, you have amnesia, don't you? So you have no idea what I'm saying. Oh, that's nice, now I look like an idiot. You mind telling your friends to put down the guns?"

Nobody moved, nobody said a word, and no guns were dropped. The wolf tilted its head, raising what could be considered an eyebrow.

"What?" He asked at the complete astonished looks. "Was it something I said?"

* * *

><p>AN: And there you have it! I have finally updated! And you have met a new character! What is his name? You shall see. Hopefully you know who he is, and if not, I'll make it obvious later. Oh, and I fixed my problem of differentiating between "to" and "too." Don't know when or why or how, but I think I may have finally learned the difference. Now! I have a few **VERY IMPORTANT **things that I need to cover.

**Paul! **He's not here right now. Obviously. BUT! He's going to be coming back in eventually, because apparently people like him. Which is surprising, since he was only supposed to be in here for about a chapter or so. And now he's a regular. Anyway, do you want to have like a short-story or omakes or whatever that detail what he's doing? Because there is a story about him that I have thought up between when he left and when he comes back in. **If you want this separate story,** then do you want it to be shorts at the end of each WiSC chapter, or its own separate story? I MUST KNOW!

**On the subject of Gatekeeper/Vulpes Alveus/and, now, From the Ashes.** I will be updating them. Eventually. I don't want to force it, though, so I'm waiting for inspiration, which is at an all-time low right now since I'm working on a piece of original work that is currently pissing me off with the four rewrites I've done.

**What is "From the Ashes," you ask? **A story of mine that started as a one-shot, but is something that people want me to continue. It's a Doctor Who/Harry Potter crossover with a concept that has, apparently, never been used before. Hint, it involves phoenixes, the usual 10th Doctor insanity, eccentric Dumbles, and the general confusion that comes with the Doctor. Check it out, if you want. I'd appreciate it!

REMEMBER, TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THE WHOLE "PAUL SIDE-STORY THING." I must know, so I can start it and have it done so I can upload it at the right moment.

P.S. - I wanted to upload this when I finished it (1:15 A.M. this morning) but my family just (sorta) got a new dog (A beagle-lab mix named Zeus. He's cute, and wags his tail in this little circle. It's funny. And cute.) and one of his previous owners abused him, so he's a bit clingy. It's cute, though. He's sleeping right now, but the moment you move he's awake, and I don't want to have to get him to lay back down on his bed again. So I'm waiting until morning. Even though I don't want to...but I like Zeus. He's cute.

Did I mention he's cute?


	7. Birth of the Prowlers

Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil. Paul, the yet-to-be-identified-wolf, and the Predator/Berserker _are _mine, however. Well, the wolf is KINDA mine, though his character ties in with one from one of the games...right. If you want to use them(which I doubt you will, but hey, whatever.), ASK first, wait for a response, and give credit where credit is due.

**Concerning the side-story of Paul's adventures: **I've decided that it'll be a separate side-story, which I will update, most likely all at once, once Paul comes back into WiSC so that there aren't any spoilers. I already have the prologue and chapter 1 typed, and I have chapter 2 already started. It's working title is _"The Misadventures of an Idiotic Sheep." _Unless I come up with another title (which I probably won't, 'cause I like that one), then that will be it, so keep your eyes open for it!

I wasn't even planning on writing the next chapter for WiSC...but then I got birthday money in the mail from my grandparents...and went to Game Stop...and saw RE6...and then beat Leon's campaign(for the fourth time) in under three hours...so, yeah, I've got them zambies and Leon on the brain. XD On another note, I'm considering bringing in Jake into this fic, 'cause I like that snarky son-of-a-bitch.

If you're still reading this author's note, I applaud you and your family, and praise you on your upbringing.

**Chapter 7**

**Birth of the Prowlers**

Saying that Leon was annoyed was an understatement.

It wasn't the threat of zombies, or the still slightly-suspicious teammates of his that was annoying, _oh _no.

It was the freaking talking wolf that defied all laws of logic.

Who was stalking him through the woods.

And would not _shut up._

The massive animal had lapsed into Infected tongue, and had explained that he found the Infected language easier to work his tongue around, considering its grunts, snarls, and growls were similar to the way he was used to communicating with. Either the wolf had said that, or had gone off on a tangent about watermelons. Leon wasn't entirely sure. He had stopped listening right around the fifth time the wolf refused to take a hint and leave.

It wasn't that Leon wasn't excited about finding another Infected who _wasn't _completely bat-shit insane, because he was. Of course, if that Infected had been human, it would have been better, but Leon was willing to take what he could. On any other occasion, Leon would gladly engage the wolf in an intellectual debate; in other words, interrogate the hell out of the wolf over how the animal knew him. But his personal opinion wasn't the problem, it was his team's.

Even though the Survivors acted calm around Leon, like the accepted him as he was, they still jumped if he snuck up behind them on accident, flinch as his mutated hand - even with the bandages covering it - was lifted too close to them, recoil if he did something that made his status as Infected painfully obvious. Leon wasn't blind, or stupid like the other Infected; he saw the way the others reacted. Surprisingly, Zoey was the only one who didn't flinch around him. If it had been anyone to behave the way Zoey was, Leon would have guessed veteran-Bill, or dense-Francis. Even level-headed-Louis, to a certain degree. But not run-into-every-situation-gun's-blazing-because-"I saw it on a TV show/video game"-Zoey.

...on second thought, her calm demeanor made _perfect _sense.

Either way, his relationship with the Survivors was still on shaky grounds, and a massive wolf that hid tentacles under his flesh that was currently lapsing in and out of the Hunter and Smoker variations of the Infected tongue wasn't really helping him.

For the past two hours since the wolf rescued them, Leon had been carefully and methodically slowing his pace, until he had unnoticeably dropped behind the group of four. Once he was satisfied with the distance he had put between him and his teammates, he whirled on the white wolf.

"Would you _shut up _for _ten minutes?" _Leon hissed, glaring hard at the wolf, forcing his eyes to flash yellow in an attempt to frighten the wolf. And of course, it had no effect; the wolf just stared at him with that strange "raised eyebrow" expression of his.

_"I was _trying _to annoy you into talking." _The wolf replied evenly. He shook out a bit of dust from his fur, and continued to trot after the group of Survivors, forcing Leon to resume his walking. _"You're being too quiet. Of course, you were never much of a talker before, but still, I would think that somebody who forgot their past, and then found somebody who could fill them in, at least a bit, wouldn't stay quiet. Soooo..." _The wolf trailed off. _"What do you have on your mind?"_

"No, I'm not doing this." Leon muttered to himself, shaking his head. "I am _not _getting into a discussion with a _wolf." _

"No quiero hablar?" The wolf spoke, cocking his head. "Si quieres, puedo hablar."

"No!" Leon snapped, his annoyed expression faltering as the wolf grinned.

_"Well, you remember Spanish. That's good." _

"...I'm going to throttle your neck."

_"No you won't! Because, if you do, you'll never get answers to your ever-burning questions."_

"There's somebody else who can tell me about me." _'BLACKOUT, for one. They probably know _everything _about me, especially if Paul's theory is correct.' _

_"Oh? And you know where to find this person?" _Leon was silent. _"I thought so. So! Looks like you're stuck with me!" _

"You are _not _following us all over the damn country!" Leon barked, tangling his fingers in the fur on the back of the wolf's neck to keep the massive animal from moving off any further. "I've already got enough problems on my plate, I don't need a logic-defying animal added to that!"

Instead of agreeing with Leon's words, or agreeing to leave like Leon had hoped, the wolf lazily blinked, long and slow.

_"You don't exactly fit into the box labeled "logic" yourself there, Leon." _Leon released a frustrated squeak, sounding more like a dying chipmunk than an annoyed man.

"...Leon?"

The mentioned man was suddenly gone, vanishing with a loud, indignant screech.

Zoey stood directly two feet from where Leon had been, her confused eyes blinking rapidly as the wolf rolled around on the ground, literally roaring with laughter.

"Shut up, mutt!"

Zoey craned her neck, peering up into the tree branches above her.

Leon was clinging to a thick branch, the claws on his hands digging so far into the bark, his claws weren't even visible anymore. His legs were wrapped around the branch, and he was hugging it like his life depended on it. Upside-down. Like a sloth.

"...what're you doing up there?" Zoey asked, her cheeks inflating with barely-suppressed laughter. Seeing this, Leon's face brightened to the likeness of a tomato.

"Well, what're _you _doing down _there?" _He countered.

_Great comeback, Leon. Really. That was very nice, very well executed._

And to make the situation _so _much better, Scott had returned. Lovely.

Peeling his fingers from the branch, Leon dropped back to the forest floor, his face set in something that was "definitely not a pout."

_"That was perfect."_

"Nobody wanted your opinion!" Zoey offered a sickeningly-sweet smile, one that could send shivers down the spines of war vets and bikers alike; in fact, it did, a fact that could be attested by Bill and Francis.

"Aw, you're talking with your pet! So cute..."

"He is _not _my pet!"

_"Ha, the woman likes me! Score! I'm totally starting to blend with the group. In your FACE! Hey, can I have a gun?" _Leon rounded on the wolf, choosing that over glowering at the brunette woman.

"Listen, buddy, she does _not _like you, you are _not _starting to blend, it is _not _in my face, and NO YOU CANNOT HAVE A GUN!"

Zoey was by the wolf's side in mere seconds, somehow teleporting there in the time it took for Leon to blink. Her face was buried in the side of the wolf's neck, rubbing her cheek on his bright fur.

"Aw, his name is Buddy? That's an adorable name, Leon. I didn't know you had it in you."

"I didn't name him, because he isn't my pet!"

"He's totally your pet."

_"I'm totally your emotional-support puppy."_

"...both of you, shut up." Leon pinched the bridge of his nose. "Zoey, I didn't name him, and he's not my pet. I don't even remember where I would have met a wolf, let alone when I may or may not have met _this _one." He waved his hand in dismissal. "He likes you, maybe he'll listen to _you. _Tell him to leave so we can go find the evac camp."

For a long moment, Zoey looked back and forth between Leon and the wolf, her face blank, her eyes unblinking.

"I now dub you Buddy Kennedy."

"Zoey!"

"Zom-boy, Buddy. Buddy, Zom-boy. Now let's make nice so we can all be one, big dysfunctional family again." She stood, and unceremoniously rejoined the group of Survivors, who were stopped for a break a few yards ahead. "I was serious, you know! Anybody sane is a Survivor to me, whether you're human, animal, or _something in between."_ She said pointedly, staring hard at Leon. He frowned and diverted his glare to a tree, silently attempting to burn a hole through the bark. Of course, he understood what Zoey was trying to say. But did that make him want to listen any more? No, not really. He would still rather kick the wolf off a cliff.

Speaking of the wolf...

_"...I like her. Can I have one?"_

"...shut up, _Buddy."_

**_:::One Day Later:::_**

_'So, it's official.' _Leon thought along as his fingers flew over the keyboard of his patched-together laptop. _'Our rag-tag little group of dysfunction now has a talking, mutant zombie-wolf as a teammate. So instead of scouting ahead and killing Infected to keep our temporary camp safe, I have to baby-sit a mutt._

_'...my life is now complete._

_'He doesn't even make any sense! I mean, a talking wolf! How does _that _work? How does the Infection make a wolf able to speak human languages?! The Infection _removes _the ability to speak Human, not create it!_

_'...oh, and the damn dog won't _leave me alone.'

"Hey, vamp-man!"

Leon slammed his laptop closed and stuffed it into his backpack before Francis could lay his eyes on it. He had found the laptop, and had managed to repair it, while still in Mercy City. He hadn't told anybody that he had it, that it was working, or that the Internet of all things was somehow still working. And, fearing for his laptop's life, he had refrained from telling anybody he had it. Even Paul. _Especially _Paul.

"What?" Leon responded, adding an extra edge of annoyance and gruffness in hopes Francis hadn't caught a glimpse of what had been in his hands, nor what he had been doing. That man would _never _let Leon live down the fact he was keeping a type of blog concerning life as an Infected.

"We've got good news." Francis pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his back pocket and flicked it over into Leon's awaiting hands. The blonde Infected peeled it open, grimacing at the dried blood that had been keeping it together. He sent a pointed look to Francis. "Yeah...ran into a few vamps while scouting ahead."

Ignoring the fact that _Francis _got to scout ahead and have fun instead of him, Leon returned his attention to the paper.

_Riverside, Illinois_

_Northeast Illinois_

_Military Evacuation!_

_There is an evacuation center being run by the U.S. military in Riverside, Illinois. Any and all who are able to make the trip are advised to do so for evacuation to a safe zone._

Leon frowned and pulled out one of the many maps he had shoved into his backpack on different occasions. He unrolled the map, his eyes scanning the different towns on the map of Illinois. _'No...no...no...ah ha!'_ There, in Lake County! A small dot labeled Riverside! And if his estimations were correct, that little town wasn't too far off; it was probably the place he had smelled in the first place.

"Where'd you find this?" The Predator asked, waving the paper in the air before handing it back.

"Bill and I found a road not too far from here."

"In the direction I had pointed?" Leon asked with a shit-eating grin, one that went ignored by the biker.

"We found it there." The darker-haired man continued. "Zoey and Louis are looking over the maps now, and they think that road leads to Riverside."

_"A town?" _Buddy asked, leaning over Leon's shoulder to peer at the map. Leon snatched it away from him, rolling it up and replacing it in his backpack with a glare at the wolf, who _had _been sleeping. _"With military evacuations? That's what we're looking for, right?" _

Leon pushed against the neck of the wolf, forcing him to back up.

"Yes, that's what _we're _looking for." Leon turned to Francis, ignoring his confused expression at Leon's responding to a bunch of growls. "When will we be heading out?"

"As soon as you're reading to go." Francis replied, crossing his arms. Leon was on his feet in moments, swinging his backpack over his shoulders.

"Then I'm ready now."

**_:::On the Road:::_**

"...well, this is a load of bull." Zoey spoke in a falsely-cheerful voice, staring with a blank face at the mangled bridge before the group. The entire bridge had collapsed, leaving only a few feet left over on either end. One end was just a sheer drop, while the other end - the end of the bridge they were wanting to reach - had a slanted slab of concrete and asphalt tilted towards the ground. Even if they went down the embankment into the dried up river, though, the end of the slanted slab was too high, and it was too steep to shimmy their way up.

To put it simply, they were stuck.

"So, either we try to find another way around..." Zoey leaned carefully over the edge of the broken bridge, peering down to the end of a fall that would certainly break her legs, if not just kill her from the impact. She looked up to what remained of the other side of the bridge. "...or we can risk sliding down that thing, and possibly fall to our deaths."

"That's assuming we don't just gouge ourselves to death, first." Bill added, nodding his head towards the rods of twisted, jagged metal that were supposed to reenforce the bridge, but had failed at its job. Louis groaned.

"Why can't our lives ever just be _simple?"_

"Then it wouldn't be a apocalypse, now would it?" Leon asked rhetorically, staring thoughtfully at the gap between the two ends of the bridge, paying no real attention to what he was saying. He glanced to his teammates. "I could probably make that jump, even with my ankle all screwed up."

"No. Nuh uh. No way." Zoey shook her head. "Not gonna risk it."

"Your concern is touching, Zoey, really, but we have to get over there-"

"And we will. The bridge isn't our only way of getting to Riverside, you know." Leon glanced at the green highway sign that read "Riverside," which hung askew directly above the mouth of the tunnel across the bridge.

"Yeah, but it'd be faster." He raised an eyebrow in Louis's direction, the aforementioned man still quietly lamenting about life's lost non-complexities. "And _simpler."_ Zoey crossed her arms.

"As your self-appointed nurse, I'm telling you _no_. Don't make me drug you up on pain pills until you think you're on fire. _Again._"

Leon was torn between laughing at her statement, pointing out that Paul had threatened something very similar once, attempting the jump anyway, or cringing at the memory of the night before, when he had refused to rest. So instead, he settled for just shutting up and nodding.

_"I bet I could make the jump." _Buddy mused, cocking his head back and forth while staring at the gap. _"Tell her!" _

Leon relayed the message, grinding his teeth together. They all knew Buddy could speak English, so why didn't the dumb wolf not just do that instead of using Leon as a go-between?

"Are you sure?" Zoey asked. "It's a far jump, and the only reason Leon would be able to make it is because he has the abilities of a Hunter." Buddy just nodded enthusiastically. "...alright, if you think you can, go ahead and see."

Buddy whipped around to face the bridge, his long tongue lolling out of his mouth in concentration as he dragged his claws along the road. He suddenly darted forward, racing towards the gap.

He threw himself off of the bridge, limps stretching out and head lowering to cut down wind resistance.

He sailed through the air, tail like a streamer behind him.

It was like the world had gone into slow motion, the group of four Survivors and one Infected tracking the wolf's progress with their eyes, while Louis's and Zoey's jaws dropped in awe.

A confident grin spread across Buddy's maw.

_THRUMP!_

Buddy slammed stomach-first into the end of the slanted slab of concrete, and slowly slid off, peeling away from the asphalt before falling to the ground, far below, with a resounding _THUD._

Leon promptly introduced his palm to his face.

A short series of barks were issued from the dried-up riverbed, and four pairs of eyes turned to one fair-haired Infected for translation.

"He said, and I quote, "Never mind, screw that.""

"Plan A, then? Right. Plan A." Bill waved for the group to follow him, leading them around the barrier of the bridge, and down the steep embankment to the bottom of the riverbed, where Buddy was gnawing on a freshly-slaughtered Infected.

_'Lovely.' _Leon thought with a grimace. "What now, oh wise and powerful leader?" Leon asked, sarcasm dripping from his words, as he gestured to the torn-apart ladder that would have brought them up to the top of the other side of the bridge. He contemplated asking Zoey if he could jump _now,_ but the look on her face was answer enough. _'What's the point of having these abilities if I can't just use them already?!' _

_Women, am I right?_

_'Nice of you to make a return, Scott. Where were you when I was crashing a helicopter?'_

_I was...busy._

_'Busy?! With _what?! _You're a voice inside my head! What were you doing? Going to a mental-club with my inner child?' _

_As a matter of fact, I was. _

Leon refrained from palming his forehead again, but he desperately wished to.

Keeping a tight grip on his beloved Desert Eagle, he strode over to Bill, who had pulled out his own map once Leon pointed out the broken ladder. Noticing the blonde man hanging over his shoulder, Bill shifted slightly, and pointed at a spot directly on Lake Michigan's coast. "See this spot here?" The silver-haired man asked. "That's Riverside. That's where the evacuations are happening." He shifted his finger minutely to the left. "We're around here. We have to get from here to there with little supplies, few guns, and our massive group."

"And hope the evacuations are still going on." Leon muttered, narrowing his eyes as he peered at the map. Leon, personally, had no problem going on a hike instead of through tunnels and over roads. Knowing his luck, even _if _they had gotten to the other side of the bridge, he probably would have had to lead the group through a series of tunnels and sewers before they found anything even remotely related to a town. The chances of running into Infected would be greater on roads, too; the Infected might not be the brightest crayons in the box, but even they knew to stick to places that were popular for travel, in hopes of snagging a Survivor.

"Yeah, and that...I don't suppose you've remembered something about your days of being an agent, and now know the best route to get to the evac point?"

"_If _I wasan agent... and no, I don't." Leon spun in a slow circle, once again sniffing the air. Thanks to them being near a road, the smell of death hung heavier in the air, but he had already learned to pick through the scent, and move on to others. "There's some hiking trails over that way, I think." Leon said slowly, gesturing towards the east. "But I smell quite a few Infected over there."

"Better than sitting around here like bait." Bill grunted as he hefted his M16 up onto his shoulder. "Hiking trails this way, folks! Let's go!"

Leon took up the mantle of leading the group towards where he had smelled the hiking trail, the scent of sweat, food, and hiking supplies concentrated in a long, thin line; how hiking supplies had a scent, and why he had managed to identify it, he had no idea, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Buddy trotted alongside him, keeping an alert eye out for any Infected that thought it wise to try and sneak up on the group.

"So. You said you knew stuff about me. Start talking." Leon muttered out of the side of his mouth, staring unblinking at the lines of trees on either side of him as the group entered the hiking trail. He suddenly whirled and pulled the trigger, lodging a bullet in the skull of a wandering Common that had been stumbling a bit too close for Leon's liking.

_"Well, I don't know too much - hey, don't give me that glare, I probably know more than you! - so I won't be able to answer all of your questions, but...go ahead, ask away." _Buddy replied.

"How do I know you?"

_"Ah, the obvious question. How creative. You were on a mission in Spain. To make a long story - one where I'm missing most of the details - short, I had my foot caught in a bear trap, and you stopped and helped me out of it. Thanks for that, by the way; I never got to thank you properly."_

"I was on a mission? So I _was _an agent."

_"Yes, one of the president's closest, if your assignment was anything to go by. You were rescuing the president's kidnapped daughter."_

"I knew the _president? _Holy-"

_"Yep, you knew him. You have a new president now, so I don't understand why that is impressive."_

"It just is, alright?" Especially since Leon had been operating under the assumption that he had been a run-of-the-mill agent, not a special one. "What about what you said back there? That I had a...thing...inside of me?"

_"A Plaga! Nasty little buggers. That was the Infection of the week back then. The gist of it is that a Plaga is this littler parasite that you get put inside of you, it matures, and then boom, you're pretty much dead, and the Plaga runs your mind. You had one inside of you, but you got rid of it in time. I wasn't actually _there _for that, but I would be able to smell if you didn't. That's what I have in my back; a Plaga. A Plaga inside of a wolf turns that wolf into a Colmillos. That's what I am, but without the does of insanity." _The wolf seemed to frown. _"That's all I really know, though."_

For a while, the group walked on in silence, with the quiet broken only by gunshots to take out any stray Infected.

_"What about a group called BLACKOUT?" _Leon asked, frowning as he forced himself to speak in Infected; the Survivors knew little to nothing about the group following Leon, and he wanted to keep it that way, for the time being.

Instantly, Buddy's fur bristled.

_"They're annoying."_ He responded, a light growl lacing his words. _"I've seen their agents all over this country, and I saw a few of them in Spain, too, before I came here. I don't know anything about them, aside from that they're sticking their noses where they don't belong. Why? How do you know about them?" _

_"They've been following me." _The Predator said. _"They've attempted to attack me more than once now. Once, they almost succeeded."_

_"...I don't know much about them, Leon, but I _do _know that if they're coming for you, then you're in trouble. I saw their agents drag off Infected and Survivors alike, and I've never seen either returned. They're bad news, I can smell it."_

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Leon suddenly halted, throwing up his arm to get the Survivors trailed behind him to halt, and he drove his knee lightly into Buddy's side, alerting the Colmillos. "Buddy? Didn't you tell me yesterday that the Green Flu doesn't effect animals?" The wolf frowned, but nodded.

"Yes, why?" He asked, speaking English for the benefit of the four behind him and Leon. Said blonde Infected slowly holstered his Desert Eagle, and slid his M16 from his back. He lifted it, pointing the barrel to the trail ahead.

"Mind telling _them _that?"

Up ahead on the trail, near a bend in the road, crawled two figures, but equal in size, a size that nearly reached Buddy's own. The beasts resembled wolves as well; in fact, they _were _wolves, both a deep black in color, with eyes a cloudy white from the Infection. Behind the wolves staggered a mass of Common Infected, following the wolves like the souls of Limbo who scrambled eternally after a blank banner.

"What the-" Francis choked. "Vampire wolves?! I thought that white one was the only one!"

"If it makes a difference, so did I." Buddy called back over his shoulder, his hackles rising as he pulled his black lips back from his fangs. _"Taking out Lessers is easy. Taking out _Greaters _is a bit difficult, but still easy. Human bodies are naturally soft, and easy to shred. Something that's been _raised _to fight for its life?" _Buddy snorted.

"This won't be easy. We should probably run...you take the one on the left, I take the one on the right?"

_"Just what I was thinking. Vamos!" _The Colmillos was off like a shot, back splitting open with a snarl to reveal the whipping tendrils of flesh that sprouted from his back like vines. Buddy unceremoniously tackled the wolf on the left, quickly becoming a snarling tangle of fur, flesh, claws, and fangs.

"You guys take the Infected! Leave the wolf to me." Leon gave a little hop - which, in reality, carried him to the point that his feet cleared seven feet - and latched onto a low-hanging branch. He swung himself up on it, momentarily paused to readjust his weight and regain his balance, and then braced himself for the recoil of his M16 as he fired it directly into the face of the other wolf.

The Infected animal snarled, a bloody froth dripping from its shredded maw, its deranged, milky-white eyes focusing intently on him. _'Great, I have his attention. Now what?'_

_RUN, YOU BUFFOON! _

Now, Leon had learned to trust his instincts, especially when his instincts were able to create their own body in his mind. So when his instincts told him it was a good idea to run, he _usually _didn't argue.

Leon sprang backwards, the very same instincts that had told him to move forcing him to automatically land and readjust his balance on the next branch. And not a moment too soon, either; the black-furred wolf was no pushover, and had leapt the distance to where Leon had been standing previously, razor-sharp claws smashing right through the branch that was as wide around as Leon's neck.

_'Note to self: Don't be hit by its paw.' _Leon thought. He spun around and leapt to the next branch, spinning around the drunk to an opposite branch to veer off the trail and leap deeper into the forest. He picked up the pace, blindly springing from tree to tree like some kind of rabid squirrel on steroids, firing randomly over his shoulder to attract the attention of the black-furred wolf, and lead it away from the others. _'This is _awesome! _Jumping across buildings is cool, sure, but this is like being a ninja! That's cooler than being a government agent, right? Holy crap, I could do this all day!' _

And then his ankle gave a painful twinge and rolled from its socket, and Leon rolled right of the tree he was navigating. He wrapped his fingers around his injured ankle tightly, the pressure on the joint relieving just a bit of the pain for the moment. "Dammit!" He barked, massaging the joint. Oh, he could just hear Zoey's taunting voice now, about how _she _had been right, and that nurses knew best, and blah blah blah...

Without even realizing it, Leon rolled to the left, just barely avoiding the massive, slamming paws of the black wolf as it smashed _through _a tree, splinters of bark flying every which way. Leon blinked his eyes wide, scrambling to his feet and hardly taking the time to aim his M16 before pulling the trigger.

The dozens of bullets that he unloaded from the magazine slammed into the side of the wolf, knocking it back as it flailed and screeched. Even as it did so, though, Leon only saw a few, small droplets of blood fly, and for all he knew, the blood had been from a previous victim that had yet to dry.

_Ratta tatta tatt-click click click cli-_

_'...uh oh.'_ The Predator whipped a new magazine out of its pouch at his waist, swiftly and effortlessly twitching out the empty magazine for the new one. But the few seconds that this took was all the wolf needed; it lunged.

Leon danced backwards, backpedaling as fast as he could while still trying to reload his weapon. The wolf's claws slashed at his chest, just barely breaking through the cloth of his shirt, and the skin beneath.

"Hey!" Leon snapped, thrusting his fist into the snout of the beast, a satisfying and loud _CRACK _bouncing off of the trees. "This was my last shirt! I _like _these shirts!"

The wolf whimpered, rubbing its from right leg against its muzzle and face to clear the fresh blood from its eyes.

Leon waved his hand up and down, rolling his wrist. "_Dang, _your face is as hard as _granite!"_

_"I'll kill you..." _The wolf snarled, and Leon blinked in slight surprise. So Buddy wasn't the only animal that could speak the language of the Infected. Then again, it only made sense, since the wolf _was _Infected, so he didn't really know why he was surprised at all. Leon grinned.

_"I'd like to see you try." _Taking advantage of the wolf's shocked expression - a "_human," _understanding and speaking the language of the _Infected_ - Leon unloaded the new magazine of bullets into the freshly-wounded face of the Infected wolf, the high-speed pieces of metal tearing into the soft flesh underneath the rock-hard but broken skin. "Why won't you just _die _already?!" Was this what would happen if _he _got shot in the face? Absolutely_ nothing?!_

The wolf suddenly squealed, reeling backwards, flailing its head back and forth, blood splattering on the bright grass.

Leon stared in confusion, lowering his weapon slightly. What had-

_You shot him in the eye. _Scott supplied. _Nice._

_'Oh, I did? So spraying and praying DOES work!' _Leon reloaded his M16, tossing the spent magazine into the pocket for empty magazines. Out of all thirty rounds, only one hit home. Only _one _did _any _kind of damage. _'Sort of.'_

The wolf's head snapped around, its blind eyes - _'Oh, I hit _both _his eyes. Sweet!' _- glaring unseeingly at the male Infected. _'Ha, he can't see me! This'll be easy-SHIT!' _

Leon struggled under the sudden grip of the wolf's claws; the massive beast had sprang the distance between itself and Leon, slamming into him and driving him to the forest floor.

_It can still smell your blood, genius._

_'Thanks for warning me sooner!'_

Grunting, Leon slammed the butt of the M16 into the wolf's sternum repeatedly, reaching around the thick front limbs of the monster to reach his - hopefully - softer underbelly.

The wolf, however, was unrelenting, and refused to remove from where it had the upper hand. It snapped its jaws, pushing against Leon's gun in an attempt to sink its long fangs into his face, bloody drool dripping in thick strings onto Leon's face and the ground surrounding him.

_'Ugh, gross!' _"Screw this!" He pressed his left foot against the underside of the wolf, and shoved off with as much strength he could muster in his compromised position.

That sucker _flew._

Leon watched, his jaw dropped and eyes wide, as the wolf sailed off into the evening sky, a loud mix of a screech and a howl trailing behind it, long limbs flailing as it tumbled off into oblivion.

Silence.

A long, shrill whistle startled Leon out of his frozen posture, his head whipping around as far as it could go.

Standing by the tree that Leon had slipped off of was the four Survivors plus one slightly-bloodied Buddy, all eyes comically wide, and more than one jaw dropped.

"Damn, boy." Bill whistled again.

"I, uh, forgot I was able to do that." And he had; his intent had been to just shove the wolf off so he could get back to his feet, not launch the poor sucker into the upper atmosphere.

He scrambled to his feet, dusting himself off and replacing his M16 on his back. "How was everything on your end?"

"Good enough." Louis said with a shrug.

"I got bit." Francis moaned, cradling his left hand, gingerly rubbing his thumb over the round, semi-circle of a bite mark. "A dumb vampire bit me! I can already feel myself turnin'. Can anybody see my fangs? I think my fangs have already shown up!"

"You're _immune_, Francis. Shut your mouth."

"_You _shut your mouth, old man! You don't know what this feels like! I'm dying!" Francis's shoulders shook with suppressed sobs. "We're gonna have to cut it off! I'm gonna lose my shotgun hand!"

"You use two hands for your shotgun, boy, they're _both _your shotgun hand!"

"Sorry about him." Zoey sighed, moving over to Leon's side with an apologetic smile. "I gave him some extra-strength pain pills so he would stop complaining about his little bite."

Leon glanced over at Francis, his eyebrow raising as the dark-haired man collapsed dramatically onto the ground, weeping openly about his "lost humanity."

"How's that working for you?"

Zoey just sighed and smacked her forehead with her palm.

**_:::Later That Night:::_**

Leon reclined against a tree with a content sigh, slipping his backpack off his shoulders and letting it plop unceremoniously onto the ground. He slid after it, hitting the ground with a dull _THUD._

The Survivors had decided to stop for the night, even if they were still out in the open. Without any sign of a safe house around, there wasn't much of a choice. Buddy and Leon had helped the others erect a barrier between them and the outside world; Leon and Buddy had worked to tear down trees and stack them in a small, sort of roundish circle seven feet tall. At the very least, it would slow the flow of Infected down long enough for them to pick them off.

Now, though, he sat against a tree inside of the small circle, rubbing his chest where the wolf had slashed him.

Buddy trotted up to the blonde-haired Infected, frowning and cocking his head. _"You're hurt." _He said needlessly. _"Do you want me to get Zoey?" _Leon smirked and shook his head, removing his hand and lifting his shirt to show three, thin pink lines where the wolf's claws had made contact. Even now, the pink lines were fading to a faint white.

"Rapid healing. Gotta love it." Small injuries, of course, were easier. Large wounds, like broken bones, took longer. _'Especially when that broken bone is your ankle.' _Leon thought with a small glare in the direction of the aforementioned joint. Leon's smile vanished. "Is something wrong?"

_"I...have to talk to you." _Buddy trotted to Leon's side and lay down. He curled his head around behind him, near his left hind leg, and pulled something from around his paw. He thrust his head forward, offering the object to Leon.

The Infected man took it slowly, glancing back and forth between the wolf and the thing he had handed to him. "How in the hell were you hiding that around your ankle?"

_"Just look at it, Leon." _

The man sighed and redirected his attention, staring at the long strip of thick leather that Buddy had handed to him. He frowned. "A collar?" He asked. "...are you asking me to put it on you or something?" Buddy shook his head with a snort.

_"No! It belonged to the Infected wolf I fought. I ripped it off his throat on accident." _Buddy gestured with his snout to the jagged tear in the leather. _"But that's beside the point. Look at the plate on the front." _

Leon twisted the collar around, a glint of metal catching his eye.

Attached to what could only be the front of the collar was a long, narrow strip of silver metal, letters pressed into the surface to spell out words. Blood and dirt clung to the rusty metal, but the words were still legible. One word was, in particular.

_BLACKOUT._

The blood in Leon's veins grew icy cold and he blanched, turning as white as a ghost. His fingers froze, no longer absentmindedly rubbing his still-sore chest. The collar slid from his fingers.

_"...they were from BLACKOUT?" _Leon asked quietly, though really, he didn't know why he was whispering; the Survivors wouldn't be able to understand him, anyway. Buddy nodded.

_"I think so, yes."_

_"...then that means that BLACKOUT is near?"_

_"Maybe." _Buddy shrugged noncommittally. How a canine shrugged, Leon would never know. _"I don't know. This Infection has been going on for a while. If they've been out of wherever BLACKOUT is located, then it's possible they just wandered all the way here. I mean, I started looking for you once the Infection hit Spain, and I got halfway across the world in that amount of time."_

"Hmm..." Leon's eyes darted to the four Survivors. _"...do you think I should tell them?" _He asked. _"About BLACKOUT, I mean. If any BLACKOUT agents are around here, then we might be in trouble."_

_"We're in trouble either way." _Buddy sighed. _"Tell them if you want. It's you they're following, not me. That makes it your decision. I just wanted to let you know what I found."_

"Thanks." Leon mumbled, returning to staring at the metal plate on the collar.

He had thought he had left behind the BLACKOUT nonsense when he escaped Mercy City.

Now, he wasn't so sure.

He flexed his right hand, staring at where black, rock-hard flesh was peaking through the bandages that were quickly becoming shredded on the sharp edges of his new flesh.

_'Nothing can ever just be simple, can it?'_

_Welcome to life, Leon. _Scott said. _Don't let it smack you in the ass on your way out._

**_:::San Diego, California:::_**

He found it all funny. Hysterical, really.

The world had gone to Hell. Most of San Diego was a burnt-out, rusted shell of its former glory. No longer were there a plethora of shiny, tall buildings that reached their fingers towards the sky. No longer were there little metal ants, filled with little people going about their normal, mundane lives. Replacing it all was piles of rubble and ash, gutted cars, and the Infected.

And he sat above it all in probably the last skyscraper that stayed true to its original glory, watching through the massive windows of his office as those less fortunate, those who didn't work for him, were left to wither and die.

Yes, William Roth found it all very laughable.

_'Petty humans. Living their comfortable lives. Let's see them live so comfortably _now.'He mentally sneered. He was brought out of his thoughts as the door slammed open, a man dressed in the armor-like uniform of his personal soldiers walking swiftly in. "What?" Roth snapped, glowering at the man who dared interrupt his joyful thoughts.

"Sir, we tracked the three members of Psi Team as they searched for Prototype-Alpha, as you directed, sir."

"And?" Roth demanded eagerly. The failure of Alpha Team to return his pet had left Roth in a state of annoyance and anger that border-lined rage; apparently, they had run into difficulties. Prototype-Alpha, it seemed, had made a _friend._

That alone went against the Project's programming, not to mention so many other things that it did that had been reported.

While Psi Team wasn't even close to being the best team of soldiers he had, they were still known to get the job done when needed. Hopefully they had more success than Alpha Team.

"...we've, uh, lost contact with them, sir."

_SMRACK! _

Roth removed his fist from the fresh crack in the surface of his expensive desk, his teeth grinding together.

"Prototype-Alpha killed them?" He asked, his voice dangerously low. If the Project - Prototype-Alpha, the Predator, Theta, whatever he wanted to call him - had killed the three he had sent, then not all would be lost. At least it would show that the Project wasn't a _complete _failure when it came to mental programming.

"We don't know, sir. Agents Zeta, Sigma, and Epsilon have dropped off the grid. Last they were heard from, they were headed towards the main hospital of Mercy City, where they believed Prototype-Alpha to be hiding. We haven't heard from them since."

Roth swiveled his chair around, breathing heavily through clenched teeth in an effort to reign himself in.

It wasn't a complete loss. There was still the possibility that Prototype-Alpha had finally started to kill humans, as it was supposed to. Maybe all of Roth's work hadn't been a _complete _waste.

"And what of Prototype-Alpha's _friend?" _He scoffed as he said the last word; monsters shouldn't have friends, _couldn't _have friends. It had to be some sort of fluke. "What of him? What of the camp he was helivaced to?"

"The walls were breached, just as you wanted, sir. The camp was overrun. Alpha team is searching for his body in the corpses; their punishment for failure, as per your orders. Sir." The soldier quickly added the "sir" at the end, almost having forgotten it. Doing so could have resulted in him being thrown into the Pit; definitely not a place he wanted to be without any weapons.

"Good. Report to me when his body is found. Not _if,_ soldier, _when." _

"Yessir."

"Dismissed." The soldier moved to leave, but Roth suddenly spun around. "Wait." The soldier immediately stopped and performed an abrupt about-face.

"Sir?"

"What were those things? With the tongues? The ones we made from the recovered sample that was found in Raccoon City a few years back?" Roth asked. "What were the guards calling them? The ones with the claws."

"...Lickers, sir?"

"Yes! Those! Lickers." Roth leaned back in his large chair. "Give them something that has Prototype-Alpha's scent on it; that jacket that it keeps leaving all over the place. Use that. Send out of a pack of them to track down my little pet and bring it back here."

"Yessir!" The soldier once again turned to leave.

"Oh, and Captain?" The soldier paused and looked over his shoulder at his boss. "Make sure the Lickers' mental programming lets them know that they can drag it back with all bones broken, and beaten within an inch of its life. Am I clear?"

"Yessir!"

"Good. _Now _you're dismissed." Roth turned back to his favorite spot to stare at, loving how the smoke twirled into the skyline of the once great city. _'Let's see how Prototype-Alpha deals with a blast from its past.'_

**A/N: **Yay! Chapter seven done! ...I still haven't named it yet...

...there we go! Named it. In case you were wondering, "Prowlers" are the massive zombie wolves. If we want to be technical, Buddy is half-Colmillos, half-Prowler. Mostly Colmillos, though.

Um...return of BLACKOUT? Yes.

...I've lost my train of thought.

...bye.

_~ Kitsune-242_


End file.
